Here’s How Google Can Help You Find Your New Apartment in Brooklyn

So you’re looking for a new apartment and everyone you’ve spoken to  says living in Brooklyn has been the best decision they’ve made.  Their only regret is that they hadn’t moved here sooner.

After all the great reviews you’re ready to move to the borough and get your brownstone stoop sittin’ on.

So you pepper your friends with questions about how they found their new place, only to discover how indiscriminate their search efforts were.   Especially after hearing…

“I found it while reading through reviews on Yelp” or “I spotted it on Craigslist after skimming 300 links“.  And my personal favorite,”I saw 3 brokers on HotPads advertise the same apartment at different rents…so I called the one asking the lowest and got it“.

Whose got time for all that manual Internet searching.  Certainly not you.  But if not you then who?  Somebody’s got to scour the web for all those new apartments available in Brooklyn.

Why not let Google find your new apartment for you.

Google, the king of search

If there’s one word that’s synonymous with Search on the Internet, it’s Google.

The mammoth web portal has indexed billions of pages from web sites around the world, offering everything from dog food to botox injections.

It sends out its army of bots 24 hours a day to crawl web sites to learn what each page is about based on its content (i.e., words, pictures, etc…) so that it will know how to deliver it in a search engine results page after someone types in a word or phrase that closely matches what the site or web page offers.

Now, you can sit there all day typing in multiple words and phrases until it spits back exactly what you’ve been looking for but that won’t save time either.

What if there was a way to let Google find every new apartment for rent in Brooklyn that would take the same amount of time it does to read an email?

Google Alerts for your Apartment Search

Alerts is an easy to use application that allows you to get updates on any topic found on the Internet by email.

Taking advantage of what Alerts can do will not only save you time but also focus your search on the results you want.

You can tailor your Alert to let Google find the street in the neighborhood you want to live on, the rental rate you’d like to get listings for and if the apartment is pet friendly.

And the best part is that Google has already done the search for you by indexing every real estate classified ad for apartment listings published on the Internet at the time you’ve set up your Alert.

What’s even better is that it can continue giving you updates weekly, daily or as often as they occur.

Which means you can get Alerts on every new apartment Google finds long before other apartment hunters will searching the old fashioned way on the Internet.

Setting up your Apartment Alert

Here’s a step by step guide to setting up an Alert that will deliver all the apartment listings published on the Internet that closely fit your shopping criteria.

1. Go to Google.com and click on More from the navigation menu at the top of the screen.  Once selected, a pull down menu should appear offering additional options.  Click on Even More from the pull down menu.

2. Your screen should have the More Google Products menu appear.  The Alerts application appears at the top of the left side of the page.  Click on the Alerts link.

3.  Once selected, you’ll be entering your search criteria into the  application’s entry fields.

4.  Let’s create an Alert to show how Google can find what you’re looking for on the Internet.  For instance, let’s assume you’re searching for a new 2 bedroom apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.  You’re familiar with the neighborhood and think you’d like to live on Sterling.

Here’s how you would enter that criteria to generate results

The Search terms field permits you to enter information like you would Google’s search engine page.  The additional options you have are Type, How often, Email length and Your email

Type has to do with where you’d like for Google to search for information you entered.  You can be specific as to the source you want it from the options available, which are Everything, News, Blogs, Video, Updates and Discussions.  Don’t limit your options to one source.  I strongly suggest choosing Everything.

How often has to do with how frequently you want to receive updates on the Alert you’ve set up. Depending on how urgent your search is, you can choose the options as-it-happens, daily or once a week.  As you can see we chose once a day.

Email length has to do with the maximum number of results you want delivered in your email.  There are only 2 options, up to 20 results and up to 50 results.  I’m going to suggest you choose up to 20 results for one simple reason; a single apartment fitting your criteria could be advertised on multiple web sites publishing real estate classifieds.

After making your selections and entering your email address, I’m sure your anxious to see what results will show up in your email.

Remember, the search term you entered is the criteria Alerts will deliver results for.

What are the chances that your terms aren’t specific enough to yield the results you’re after?  As easy as it is to set up, it would be a shame to get your first email and it not contain anything near what you were expecting.

Is there a way to make sure the terms you used will deliver the results you want?

Previewing your Alert results

Before you click on the Create Alert button, you have a chance to preview the results your search term will generate.

By selecting preview results, you’ll get a chance to see if what you’ve entered is actually delivering the information you want.  When we previewed the results in this example, here are the results it returned:

So far it appears to be yielding the results we’re interested in.  We can scroll up and down the sample results offered to be certain we’re getting what we want.  Here’s a close up of one of the results it delivered:

Judging from the looks of this individual result, we can confidently go ahead and click on the Create Alert button to let Google find apartments in Crown Heights, Brooklyn we’re interested in.

We can just click on the links contained in our email to learn more about each apartment our search criteria returns.  No more skimming through Craigslist, Yelp or HotPads for the apartment you want.  

Your Alert will deliver all the new apartment listings Google finds according to your search term from every publishing source found on the Internet.

And once found, you can just cancel the Alert to discontinue receiving emails.

Just sit back and let Google find your new apartment and spend time all that spare time saved picking pain colors and area rugs to buy for the new place you’ll call home.

I hope this post has been helpful to you, and if so, be our guest to share it with your friends on Facebook, followers on Twitter and your contacts in your Google +1 circles by using the share buttons below.

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