I am testing a new free tool from CustomScoop that searches both news and blog sites and delivers results in aggregate. So far it looks promising. The beta is by invitation only. However, they are inviting my readers to take a test drive. To try it out send them an email at this address. Be sure to tell them you read about them on my blog.
CustomScoop Personal is geared for the PR community, but honestly I think anyone interested in tracking topics will find it valuable. Their database breaks down as follows (approximations):
U.S. Online News (5,000 sources)
International Online News (2,000 sources)
US & EU Government Web Sites (7,000 sources)
Policy Web Sites (1,200 sources)
Blogs (25,000 sources)
For blogs, Chip Griffin from CustomScoop writes in that they have sought to add the most influential ones. “We have plans to ramp up that number significantly, but we’ve been in the news business for five years and only added blogs in a serious way earlier this year,” he said.
Understandably, the free version currently only allows one set of search terms per email address. The paid product allows unlimited keywords and all sorts of other bells and whistles.
CustomScoop Personal is really lightweight and easy to use. Much of it is written in AJAX (definition), which means that pages load faster and changes can be made quickly within an individual page. What I really like is how you can set up a very powerful search without any knowledge of how to construct a good Boolean query as the image below shows. You can also limit your search to either blog, government, news or policy sites and then even drill down further (e.g. only send me results from daily newspapers).
Once you set up your searches you can elect to receive results in different ways. For one, they give you a secure RSS feed. Sweet. Second, you can get twice daily emails. Lastly you can simply log in and view your results on a Web page. (see images below)
CustomScoop Personal RSS
CustomScoop Personal Web dashboard
The search results so far don't seem to keep up with Technorati or the other search services, but in time it is my hope they will improve the blog search or partner with someone else. Still, so far, it's worth giving it a go and adding it to your arsenal.
