Track Everything Like A Genius With Google Alert
Have you ever wondered how you can get informed automatically when someone talks about you, your products or your content on blog, forum, news, etc…?
If you are thinking the reasons to monitor everything about you, here are 2 main reasons out of a dozen:
- Reputation Management: You will need to know when people criticize about you or your products so that you can response properly to your prospects / customers.
- Relationship building: If you have a product or a blog, it is not uncommon to see people discuss or promote on their blog or forum. So, it is now your chance to find out the buddies and build relationship with them because they are genuinely interested in you. You will be able to provide things they wish to have in order to promote your products. You will also know the places you should spend more time to mingle around to attract some traffic.
Ok. Now, you know why you will need to monitor everything about you on the web, I am not asking you to Google all the relevant keywords about you and manually go through every single results because this is just too time consuming. Instead, use Google Alert!
What Is Google Alert?
Google Alert is a free service by Google that allows you to monitor the content you desire on the web. Check out the simple layout and all you need to do is to key in any search query you would like to monitor, select the result type and the frequency. Eventually, you can have the results delivered to your email address whenever your search queries are indexed on Google.
Some Typical Applications
Some of the search queries you might like to monitor are your name, brand, products, competitors, competitors’ products, etc…
If you find people praising your products, it is time for you to thank them and ask them if they would like to promote the products to earn some cash via affiliate marketing.
If you find affiliates promote your products on forum or blog, you can thank them and ask them if there is anything you can do to help them such as to provide more banners, swipe email, PPC keywords, etc…If they need help on specific affiliate marketing techniques to promote your products, you can also help them in order to help yourself so that you will get more revenues via affiliate traffic.
If you find people discussing your blog post content, you can chip in your opinion by answering the comments on the blog. This is a great way to strike a relationship with the blog owner and readers.
If you find people complaining about your products or defame you, it is essential to find out the reason and sort it out accordingly.
Sometimes, I will also setup a topic I am interested to follow such as Google Panda, Google Penguin, etc… so that I can keep up with all those Google algorithm update.
I will also setup some keywords that are related to my blog so that I can comment on the blog right after the blog post published. This is a under the radar technique to be the first one to comment. The first commenter usually gets more attention (quality is a must) and hence will get you more traffic in return.
Check out the short video below to see how I use Google Alert:
How do you monitor and track everything on the web? Feel free to share your thoughts below by leaving a comment.
To Your Success,
Ming Jong Tey
Filed under Blogging by on Oct 11th, 2012. Comment. 
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Comments on Track Everything Like A Genius With Google Alert
Hi Ming Jong,
Great article on Google Alert. Ahh And great to be the first one to comment. Under the radar technique
Google Alert is indeed a awesome free tool which can be used to monitor and be notified of new blog post!
Thank you.
Richard recently posted..Why Authors Should Use Kindle Publishing
@Richard: Hi Richard, you got the first place
it is a powerful tool that save us time and effort. On top of that, I also use it to monitor specific stock counter to get the news / blog discussion. Very handy to for my mid – long term stock investment.
Ming Jong recently posted..Tweet Adder Review – Get Twitter Followers Fast And Easy Way
Second!
Google Alerts is great, and can be helpful to so many people in personal and professional applications. It’s nice if you’re trying to keep up with a particular story in the news, but it can be priceless as a tool to track your company’s online presence. Thanks for the great article!
@Elena Anne: Absolutely, love this free service! It is hard to track everything on the web without proper tool. Without Google Alert, it is just a piece of cake. Setup and sit back to receive the data.
Ming Jong recently posted..How To Sell Products Online?
Google alert is great for any website owner. Just like the analytics tool, we are allowed to track and monitor a wide range of activities over the internet. For business, top class free tool. For web owners (blogs), the next best thing. Tracking activities online is never better with such powerful tool.
Ivan Aliku recently posted..Generating .edu and .gov backlinks to your blog
@Ivan Aliku: Exactly Ivan. Information overload is popular and we need to find a way to manage the great information without being overwhelmed.
Ming Jong recently posted..Market Samurai Review – Must Use Features Plus 35% Discount
I use Google Alerts as well but care must be taken not to over use it or you will get inundated with emails and you will spiral out of control in a vicious cycle of checking emails and responding to alerts.
I usually keep specific ones going for a short time before letting them go and starting new ones. How often or long do you run you Alerts?
Bill Avery recently posted..Stolen SEO Tips and Tricks
@Bill Avery: It really depends on the keywords I tracked. For my products, name, etc…I will keep them running. For keywords for blog commenting, I will also keep them running for a few days before I switch to other keywords or stop them.
The good part is we can always turn it off when necessary
Ming Jong recently posted..Ultimate Guide To Increase The Revenue Of Your Business
The only problem with Google Alerts, I found it may not offer a perfect solution for review sites, Like Yelp and Google Reviews… For example when someone is leaving a review, most often it is a given who they are referring to, and you will not find in their post a reference to the name, therefore you most likely would not get any results for this particular post.
@Mike@TheMarketingView.com: You could be right if people do not refer to the name in their review. Similarly, for places that do not get indexed by Google purposely (like some of the forums), we can’t rely on Google Alert but to participate in the forum if it is worth our time.
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