While there are several sources for content when setting up persistent search queries, nothing is as comprehensive as google. They don’t offer RSS feeds out of the box but getting a feed from those results is still possible.

Feed43 is a nice application that turns static pages into feeds. The tools they offer to define what content that you want set it apart from other services like feedity and page2rss.

To subscribe to search results, start by creating your query at Google. Go to advanced search options and restrict the search to pages updated in the last 24 hours to get the most dynamic RSS results. You can also set the number of results to return to 80 (if you set it to 100, Feed43’s service tends to choke.)

Once you’ve got a query that you like, copy the URL of the results page. It should look something like this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_epq=persistent+search&num=80&as_qdr=d

Now jump back over to feed43 and start a new feed. Paste the google URL into the address field and press ‘load.’

For Step 2, you’ll define what feed43 should consider an item.

My settings are:

Global Search Pattern: Search Results{%}>About Google
Item Search Pattern: </p> <h3>{%}</h3> <p>{*}>{%}<b>…</b>{*}<cite>{%} –</cite>
That seems to do the trick for me. Press ‘extract.’

In Step 3, you can name your feed and decide how it should be displayed.

My settings:

Item Title Template: {%1}
Item Link Template: blank

Item Content Template: {%2}<br /><a href="http://%7B%253%7D/">{%3}</a>

Try the preview button. If everything looks good, you’re done. You can now subscribe to your feed in your favorite RSS reader.

Because Google’s reach is so broad, the results of this feed tend to be very noisy. Save this option for very specific queries and use filtering tools to fine tune your feed.

By the way, you can also use this trick to subscribe to results from a Custom Search Engine. CSEs don’t offer advanced search options by default but you can simply manipulate the results URL to get the same effect. After you’ve set up your Custom Search Engine, add &num=80&as_qdr=d to the results URL to restrict them to the past 24 hours and to list up to 80 results.