Google Docs As Website Monitor

I happen to stumble on this article which talks about using Google Docs to monitor a website. The specific example is a clever one - use a Google Spreadsheet to track price changes from Google Products.

The magic that makes this all work is the ImportXML function. Specifically:

  =ImportXML("www.google.com/products?q=ipod+nano","//b[@class='ps-larger-t']")

What makes this even more useful is that you can publish your spreadsheet, and then subscribe to the RSS feed that Google Docs makes available to you. In other words, Google Spreadsheet is being used as the middle man, to grab data and fold it into a feed.

Clever stuff. There more useful Google Docs articles to be had on the site. So, check it out.