How do I set up Google Alerts for my vendors?

Setting up Google Alerts on a vendor's detail page in Vendors, so relevant news and articles about that vendor are shown there. VendorLink retrieves them through a Feed URL, which you obtain from the Google Alerts website. The article also gives tips for setting up the alerts.

On the detail page of a vendor in the Vendors module you will find 'Google Alerts'. In this section you can, as the name says, set up Google Alerts. This means that you can show several relevant news and articles related to this vendor on the vendor's detail page.

Create a Feed URL

When setting up a Google Alert in VendorLink, you need a Feed URL. VendorLink retrieves the news and articles from Google via this URL.

Follow the instructions below to get a Feed URL from Google.

1. Navigate to the Google Alerts website.
2. Enter a search term, for example the name of the vendor for which you create the alerts, and press enter.
   
3. Click the 'Create alert' button.
4. You will be asked to log in with a Google account if you are not logged in yet.
5. Click 'Show options'.
6. Make sure 'Deliver to' is set to 'RSS feed'. The rest can be set as desired.
   
7. Click on 'Create alert'. The notification has now been created and is located in the 'My notifications' overview.
8. In this overview, go to the notification and click on the RSS feed icon.
   
9. A new page opens, the link of this page is the Feed URL. You use this URL when setting up a Google Alert in VendorLink.

You have successfully requested a Feed URL.

Set up Google Alerts

Follow the instructions below to set up Google Alerts for a vendor.

1. Navigate to a vendor’s detail page (Vendors > Vendors > Select vendor)
2. Click on the blue notification under the heading 'Google Alerts'.
   
3. A pop-up window will open. Here you see an overview of the currently set Google Alerts. You also have the option to add new alerts, edit and delete existing alerts. You will also see a 'Check for new alerts' button, via this button you can manually refresh the content of the set Google Alerts. This is not necessary every time, VendorLink does this automatically several times per hour.
4. Click on 'Add' to set up a Google Alert.
5. Enter a description for the alert, and finally the 'Feed URL'. Read how to get a Feed URL at the top of this article.
6. Click on 'Add' to actually add the alert.

Tips for your Google Alerts

Here are some useful tips to make the results of the Google Alerts as relevant as possible. You can also apply these methods to standard Google searches. You use this method at Step 2 under 'Request feed URL'. The more specific your search terms are, the more relevant the notifications you receive from Google Alerts.

• To only display results from one or more specific sites, you can add site: vendorlink.nl at the end of the search. Replace vendorlink.nl with the desired website.
  
  Example: Vendorlink Spend site: vendorlink.nl
  
• Add double quotes to your search to display only results that exactly match the search. This also takes into account the order of the words. This will only show results that contain this exact search term.
  
  Example: "VendorLink HelpCenter"
  
  
• You can exclude results containing certain words by using the - sign. Then articles containing these words will not be shown. With the example below, you will receive all the news about Microsoft, except for the articles that contain the words 'office' or 'onedrive'.
  
  Example: Microsoft -office -onedrive