The chat takes place today, Jan. 26, from 10 to 11 a.m. Pacific time on Twitter.  To follow along, use the hashtag #wclw.

To help prepare, here are the questions I’ll use to guide our conversation.

1. What’s your secret for getting the most relevant results from Google searches?
2. Do you use Twitter to search for sources, and if so, how helpful is it?
3. Besides Google and Twitter, what other online search tools do you recommend?
4. If you use Help a Reporter Out, what tips do you have for getting the best results?
5. What other methods do you use to track down sources?
6. Open discussion – what else do you want to know about search and story sources?

More on search - For background reading, here are a number of posts I’ve done on search and finding story sources:

• 8 secrets for getting better HARO query results
• HARO’s Shankman to reporters: We haven’t sold you out
• Goodbye Google: 8 Internet search alternatives
• Once a source, always a source
• New ways to use LinkedIn to find story sources
• Stalking the reluctant source – 10 secrets to getting anybody to talk
• HARO rescues writers stuck for sources
• How to keep track of story sources
• How Writers Can Use LinkedIn, Part I

The litany of complaints about the search engine’s effectiveness has gotten louder and more frequent in recent weeks, causing Google to take the unprecedented step of addressing the matter in this post on its website late last week.

At issue is search engine spam and low-quality content put out by a growing number of content farms that’s watering down the usefulness of Google search results.

Meanwhile, how’s a time-strapped writer supposed to find sources for stories?

Find out this Wednesday, Jan. 26, when the monthly WordCount Last Wednesday live chat tackles the subject of Google searches, search engine spam and alternative search techniques.

The chat takes place Jan. 26 from 10 to 11 a.m. Pacific time on Twitter.  To follow along, use the hashtag #wclw.

It follows a series of posts on search skills for writers I’ve done recently, including one on alternatives to Google, an update on Help A Reporter Out (HARO), the website that matches reporters’ requests for sources with companies that could provide the information that Vocus acquried last June, and how to get the most out of a HARO query.

Maybe you’ve figured out some sure-fire alternatives to HARO or Google that you’d like to share. Maybe you’re just looking for a better way to filter Google search results.

Either way, join the conversation. At 10 a.m. we’ll all log on and introduce ourselves. After that, the chat will be organized around a  list of questions, and we’ll leave some time at the end for a free-for-all discussion.

Although it’s possible to use the standard Twitter interface for a live chat, you might find it easier to follow along with an add-on application such as TweetGrid, TweetChat or HootSuite. This tutorial explains how to set them up.

If you’re afraid you’ll offend your Twitter followers by tweeting too much during a chat, you can suggest they use an app called TwitterSnooze to temporarily turn off your tweets. If you haven’t done this before, right before the chat starts, tweet a message like this: “I’ll be in a live chat for the next hour; if you don’t want to follow, turn off my tweets with TwitterSnooze.com.”

Planning for 2011: I’m planning rest of this year’s WordCount Last Wednesday chats now, so if you’ve got an idea for a subject you’d like to see covered, send it my way. If you’re an expert in a particular aspect of freelance writing, running a freelance business or tech tools for writers and are interested in participating in a WordCount Last Wednesday chat as a guest speaker in 2011, please contact me.

Meanwhile, reporters and freelance writers continue to rely on HARO when they’re searching for story sources. I thought it would be helpful to share tips for getting the most out of HARO queries that Shankman walked me through when I interviewed him last week.

Here are Peter Shankman’s secrets for getting the most out of HARO:

1. Fill out the query form completely. Forms with missing data are flagged for review, which  means your query could go out later than you anticipated.

2. Make queries extremely specific. Not just extremely specific “ridiculously specific, obscenely specific,” Shankman says. The more specific you are, the more potential sources will know about what you’re looking for and whether they’re a match.

3. Keep queries short. HARO’s query form doesn’t have a maximum word count, but write too much and you risk potential sources not reading through the whole thing, Shankman says.

4. Include the name of the publication. Some newspapers and magazines don’t like staff writers or freelancers to reveal the name of the publication in their queries, for competitive or other reasons. But if they don’t, they risk having sources ignore them, Shankman says. His experience has shown that including the publication’s name works in a writer’s favor. “The ones from big outlets tell us when they include their media outlet they get 10 times the results as when they don’t,” he says. Some PR departments or agencies who track HARO queries for their companies or clients won’t respond to a request if they don’t know where it’s coming from, says Frank Strong, a Vocus spokesman who participated in the interview. “I am always hesitant when I see an unnamed publication, because you don’t know who it is you’d talking to, what their credibility is or who’s are the people behind it,” he says.

5. Fudge the query deadline. Yes, that’s right, the founder and manager of HARO suggests that writers cheat on the date by which they need to hear from sources. “Don’t put down the deadline of when your story’s due, but the deadline by which you want responses,” Shankman says. And if you’re on deadline, mark your query as urgent and HARO could end up sharing it on Twitter.

6. Don’t ask for free stuff. To keep amateurs and unscrupulous characters from misusing the service, HARO’s staff flags queries that include requests for free products or services, such as computer or video gaming equipment. You may review products for a computer magazine for a living and have a 100 percent legitimate reason for making such requests. But know that if you do, your query could undergo additional scrutiny, which could delay when it’s circulated.

7. Flag HARO staff about off-topic pitches. HARO’s source network now numbers more than 150,000, and writers I’ve heard from before and after Monday’s HARO post came out have said they’re getting more spam than ever, something they attribute to HARO but Shankman and Strong adamantly deny. According to Shankman, the best mechanism for policing sources who respond to queries with off-topic pitches or spam is to send an email to flag@helpareporter.com with the particulars of the situation. First offenses merit a warning; if they continue, HARO could ban an individual or the agency they work for. “There are two PR firms that can’t use HARO. It’s been that way from the beginning,” he says.

8. Manage your expectations. Although HARO has 150,000 sources, 75 percent of them are small businesses. If you’re looking for a source on an esoteric academic subject, HARO might not be the best place to find a source. “It’s a numbers game” like any other avenue you use to find sources, Shankman says. “If you want someone who’s visited New York it’s one thing, but if you want a biochemist who works with heavy metals you won’t get that many. In that case, you might be better off using ProfNet,” HARO’s more academically-inclined competitor.

Do you have your own secrets for getting the most from HARO queries? Please share by leaving a comment.

In June 2010, Peter Shankman sold Help A Reporter Out (HARO), his very popular website that matches reporters’ requests for sources with companies that could provide the information, to public relations software company VOCUS. Ever since, writers have wondered what effect the acquisition has had on the service.

When Frank Strong, a spokesman for the Lanham, Maryland, company commented on a recent post here that mentioned HARO, I took the opportunity to ask for an interview. He agreed and offered to include Shankman on the call.

Since the acquisition, there have been some changes and a lot of growth, but one thing Shankman is adamant about: he may have sold HARO, but he hasn’t sold out the journalists who rely on it. “We have no plans to charge anyone for HARO,” said Shankman, on the call from his office in New York City.

HARO was a hit with reporters almost since the two-year-old service launched. According to many writers, and as testimonials on the site attest, the service did better job of helping them find sources – often on very short notice – and provided a wider variety of sources than its main competitor, ProfNet.

It’s easy to see why Vocus was interested in HARO. Vocus owns PRWeb, a web-based press release service that competes with PRNewswire, which runs ProfNet. Adding HARO to Vocus’ other businesses would make them more competitive.

But lately, not all writers have been happy with HARO. At least a few have complained that queries take longer to post, the individuals or companies that reply to queries aren’t as on target as they used to be, and in some cases,  responses are little more than spam. Given that Vocus sells software to PR firms to manage media contacts and campaigns, some writers have questioned whether the business is using HARO to collect their email addresses and selling them to agencies or other companies to use for email marketing purposes.

The basics of HARO haven’t changed, according to Strong and Shankman. HARO is and will continue to be free for journalists and sources. The service is supported by sponsors who pay $300 to $1,500 to place ads in one of three daily email blasts (some sponsors pay less than that based on volume discounts).

As for collecting and sharing writers’ information? “That question pisses me off,” Shankman says. Most queries are auto-forwarded and sent out with an anonymous email address, so nobody’s looking at them, he says. “Once your deadline is passed, your email dies, and is no longer linked to your account. That prevents you from getting spam from people who try to harvest” email addresses, he says.

The only time a HARO staffer – there are two in addition to Shankman – open queries is if isn’t filled out completely, is for a startup publication they can’t find online, or for a publication with an Alexa ranking above 2 million.

There are a couple other things that would cause HARO to hold or follow up on a query: if the writer is asking for products for free or if they’ve previously misrepresented themselves. “If you’re asking to have the latest gaming system sent to you to review for your blog, it’s not going to happen,” Shankman says. He also recalled an instance when a writer represented him or herself as being with CNN when in fact they were an assistant editor at a CNN affiliate.

What has changed about HARO:

• HARO is growing. Both the number of journalists using it and the individuals or companies that receive its 3X a day email blasts are up 15 percent since the acquisition.
• The number of writer queries has also risen and is now between 70 and 75 per email.
• HARO’s source pool has grown to approximately 150,000 companies, the majority of them small businesses.

The service’s rapid growth is one reason journalists my have to wait longer to see their queries go out, Shankman said. “If we sent out each one (immediately) we’d have 275 queries (per email) and no one would answer,” he says. If you’ve got an urgent deadline, mark your query as urgent, he said. Even if your query isn’t urgent, he suggests including a deadline that’s well in advance of your actual story deadline.

Writers who think they’ve been spammed should alert HARO’s staff by sending an email to flag@helpareporter.com, Shankman says. If HARO receives a complaint from a writer about an off-topic pitch or other problem, the source gets a warning. If problems persist, the source or the source’s agency could be banned from the service. According to Shankman, he’s banned 400 sources from the service in the past two and a half years, including two PR firms that are barred from ever using HARO again.

As far as the future is concerned, after Vocus bought out HARO, the company agreed to maintain the status quo for a period of time before considering making any modifications, Strong and Shankman say. That time has passed, and Vocus and Shankman now are discussing possibilities. While nothing’s set in stone, one they’re considering is adding a premium tier of service over and above the free HARO service. Whatever they end up doing, “We wanted to move methodically and make sure it’s well though out,” Strong says. “We want something that will be consistent with the free HARO.”

Coming on Wednesday: 6 tips for crafting a killer HARO query. Peter Shankman shares tips and tricks that writers can use to ensure they get the bes possible responses to their HARO queries.

When I first heard about PitchforPR, I was confused. The one week-old online middleman that looks to connect companies seeking publicity for products or services with reporters and bloggers looking for story sources sounded a lot like HARO, Peter Shankman’s well-known matchmaking tool.

A lot of things about PitchforPR and HARO are similar. Both collect queries and aggregate them into email blasts.

But HARO gathers queries from reporters looking for sources for stories they’re working on and sends them to publicists in thrice daily emails.

By contrast, PitchforPR works more like a traditional PR news wire, aggregating requests from companies or professionals with a new product or service they want to get in front of influential bloggers and writers.

Unlike traditional press release services like PRWeb that spew material 24/7, PitchforPR limits the PR blurbs it runs to 10 or 15 in one day. Each day’s email blast focuses on one industry or theme – travel and vacation, baby, music, consumer electronics, etc. The service also limits companies to 350-character releases, forcing publicists to go short on hype, long on details.

But what really sets PitchforPR apart from the PR wires, according to owner Sydnie Suskind, is a short pitch a company or individual can make for up to three areas or subjects where they believe they’d qualify as an expert – a helpful feature for a beat writer or blogger trolling for sources.

The service launched in mid-August and after the first week had signed up 150 subscribers. For now Suskind is sending three email blasts a week, but hopes to increase that to five in the near future.

Suskind, a Los Angeles inventor (she designed an adjustable handbag called the Rappizi), entrepreneur and former freelance writer, says on her blog that she started the service “because I know what it’s like to need PR and not know how to get it… without, of course, spending a fortune on a PR agent.”

Follow Suskind on Twitter at @PitchforPR.

If you don’t, it might be time to get acquainted. HARO stands for “If I Can Help A Reporter Out.” It was started by a PR guy and networking maven named Peter Shankman as a place reporters can turn to when they’re stuck for sources. Shankman started it as an alternative to ProfNet, which some writers have complained has grown so big the sources it nets aren’t relevant.

For reporters, HARO is easy. You don’t even need to register. Just go to the “Reporter” side of the service, fill out the request form and click “Submit it.” Your query will be included in an emailing of multiple requests for sources that Shankman sends out several times a day to a list of more than 23,000 PR representatives, company executives and other sources.

I’d heard a lot about HARO in recent months but didn’t give it a try until last week when I was hurting for sources for an IT industry story for IncTechnology.com that I was writing at the last minute. So I took the plunge and submitted a HARO request. Within 24 hours, I got about 40+ responses from PR reps, IT consultants and company presidents, etc. By the end of day two, I’d received close to 60.

HARO isn’t just for tech stories. I have freelance friends who write about all kinds of things, from green living to parenting to finance, and they all use it and rave about it. And they’ve been able to track down the hardest sources of all to get – real people.

HARO has grown so popular so quickly, it’s now got some of the same problems that plagued other source-finding services, namely too many off-topic responses, which you can read more about in this post about it on The Renegade Writer blog. Get around that by making sure your queries are as specific as possible. And state up front that people won’t hear from you unless you’re interested in using them.

If you decide to give it a try, I’ve got one more piece of advice: since HARO can result in inquiries from many more sources than you could possibly use, when you fill out the query registration form, give a very short time frame for people to get back to you, such as in 24 yours or less. Otherwise you could get bombarded.

And if you’re a PR person, read these great do’s and don’ts from Susan Johnston’s The Urban Muse blog about using HARO to pitch story ideas to writers.