The tech blog Search Engine Land reports that Google intends to provide distribution of web search results via Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds as part of its Google Alerts service, thus allowing continuous and automatic distribution of new online mentions of companies, people or key phrases on websites, blogs or other Internet resources.

Currently, Google Alerts delivers individual e-mail messages for each automated search result, but receiving this information through RSS provides users with the ability to consolidate a variety of web search listings into one, easy to review aggregator application.

According to the report, Google says it can not yet confirm when web search feeds will be available, although it should be available “soon”.

What does this mean to salespeople?

If you are not currently using Google Alerts to track news about your most important customers, you are missing a huge opportunity to discover trigger events that may signify new sales opportunities: changes in key personnel, new corporate initiatives, effects of external forces, and other factors.  All salespeople that target specific accounts for new business development should use Google Alerts religiously. If nothing else, salespeople should use the “site:” search ability in Google Alerts to restrict new mentions of keywords inside specific domains, so they can track news coming from targeted customer websites, or other relevant industry-specific news sites.

Once automated Google web search results are available through RSS feeds, salespeople can then easily consolidate these findings into a single RSS reader program, allowing them to review a daily briefing of news items about their most critical accounts.  If you are not familiar with using RSS reader programs, here is a comprehensive listing: RSS feed aggregators.

When Google makes Alerts available through RSS feeds, sales pros should convert their e-mail distributions to RSS, and then use a reader program to follow their tailored news stream regularly.