Comparing Nexis and Google Alerts

As we move to the final stages of the pilot we are starting to do an initial review of the ease of use of Nexis and Google Alerts. Here are some initial thoughts:

Google Alerts: worldwide (it is not possible to select UK sources), simple search terms only, option to select sources (e.g. News, Blogs, Web) and returns list by these sources making it easy to sort results, alert email includes the text in the body of the email which makes it quick to review, provides option of “find similar” to expand searches.

Nexis: UK specific, more sophisticated search possible, provides search alerts as an attachment so harder to do a quick review, links from attachment very clear but takes time to get to text, text downloaded rather than live (so harder to follow links or see comments posted etc.)

Nexis returned far fewer hits than google alerts, even just for UK sources, for example on 7th September Google Returned 22 hits (11 of which are relevant to follow up) for our search terms compared with 2 from Nexis.

More analysis of the pilot to follow…once it actually finishes tomorrow!