Yves Arsenault

About a week ago I wrote an article titled “Great Internet research tool – Google Alerts” and that it was a very valuable tool for anyone who were doing research online. Today my focus is on another great tool, Google Reader.

For anyone not familiar with Google Reader it is an RSS reader that allows you to easily keep track of blogs, news sites, job sites…. any site that offers RSS feeds. Essentially when one of the sites your tracking is updated it will show up in Google Reader in a short time. This means you don’t have to constantly visit the websites that interest you to see if they’ve been updated which can save you quite a bit of time and makes it very convenient.

I use Google Reader on a daily basis. I have been for a couple of years.

There are a great number of different topics that I follow, like technology, news, business bloggers, sports news and sports bloggers…etc. Google Reader gives me the ability to check for new content from many many different sites all in one place. If it wasn’t for these RSS feeds and a program like Google Reader I don’t think I would follow nearly as many websites. I would have to be constantly “surfing” from one site to another.

I’m easily able to view new content and read the articles I want to read all in one place and in much less time.

Another big advantage that I find with Google Reader is that it is web based. This means that I don’t need to download a program and install it on my Mac or my PC. So I just visit it in a web browser.

You can create folders to categorized the sites you are following. I find this makes it quite a bit easier to sort through.

All you need is a Google account, you can find the Google Reader website here.