I recently posted about using Google Alerts to keep track of what others are saying about you or your site on the Internet.
Today, I want to show you how to use Google Alerts to spot hot trends on sites like EzineArticles.
For those of you that don’t know Ezine Articles is an article directory. To use the directory you write an original article and submit it. A human reviewer will review your article and if it meets their terms of service it will be approved and posted on the Ezine Articles website.
Many Internet Marketers use article marketing as part of their bag of tricks. You are allowed to add a resource box at the end of your article. So if you wanted to promote your site, you would type something like this in the resource box…
“If you enjoyed this article, click here for more information on xxxx”
You could then create links out of “click here” and “xxxx” and drive that traffic to your site.
Since Ezine Articles is so popular for marketers, it is a great place to find the latest trends on your niche.
Here is a Google Alert technique posted by Jack Duncan over at the Warrior Forum. It allows you to quickly be alerted to hot Ezine articles on your niche each month.
Step 1: First you will need to set up what you are searching for…or want to keep an eye on.
For instance if you wanted to keep an eye on “dog training” you would use the following
dog training site:ezinearticles.com “This article has been viewed 200..199999″ “Article Submitted On: * *, 2009″
The search string above will alert you when ever an article about “dog training” goes over 200 views that was submitted in 2009. We’ll want to modify this a little more below.
Step 2: In order to know a hot trend we’ll want to keep an eye on the current month. Let’s add the current month, which is October at the time of this writing.
Our new search string now looks like this…
dog training site:ezinearticles.com “This article has been viewed 200..199999″ “Article Submitted On: October *, 2009″
Step 3: Now we just need to set up a Google Alert using the code above
Log in to your Google Alerts
Start by modifying the code above. Just put your search term in the spot where “dog training” currently is. Paste the new code in to the “search terms field” of Google Alerts. Select how often you want to be alerted. That’s it!
Step 4: Relax while Google works on your behalf to alert you when articles in your niche start to see quite a bit of traffic.
On a quick side note, the search string above is a great way to find popular articles. It doesn’t have to be an alert.
For instance if I wanted to find all articles since July with more than 2,000 views I would head over to Google and paste this in to the search box.
site:ezinearticles.com “This article has been viewed 2000..199999″ “Article Submitted On: July *, 2009″
Enjoy!
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
Interesting idea. I’m doing similar things with Google Blogsearch but never heard about someone doing it on article sites. I now you wrote that they are often up to date with the latest trends, but shouldn’t blogs be more up to date. This is really interesting.
.-= Stefan´s last blog ..Organize Google Reader =-.
Yes Stefan you are correct if you want to find the latest trends on the internet, keeping an eye on blogs will probably alert you quicker than articles.
However, if you are doing article marketing, being able to track the articles getting the most views is very helpful.
I suggest you keep an eye on several sources when trying to stay up with hot trends. Thanks for the comment.
Hey Eric,
This really looks like a wonderful idea. I have made it a alert with my google account.
Since I am a blogger I like other bloggers need constant content for my blog and sometimes when ideas becomes short, I always look up for the Ezine as it helps me in getting ideas to draft a post by my own.
That’s a very cool idea. Article marketing is huge and can really generate some huge traffic to a blog or a money page. This is a cool way to figure out what topics are hot that people are viewing right now. You can probably use this idea to find what’s hot, find a product on clickbank to capitalize on the trend, and then create your own article to grab some of the people searching for that topic.
I can see some huge money making potential with this.
Matt
.-= Matt Wolfe´s last blog ..What Are Your List Building Questions? =-.
You are right on the money Matt with your comment. There is huge potential to pull in some cash with article marketing for those that take this technique and apply it.
Wow I had no idea you could put expressions into Google Alerts like this – I’ve used it for a simple search term but this is a really powerful technique. Combined with Alerts for news items, and RSS feeds from your favourite blogs, I imagine you could keep up-to-date with all the latest news in just a few minutes per day.
Google alerts is an awesome tool for keeping up to date on topics that interest you. Don’t be afraid to test out different queries…the possibilities are endless.
That’s very cool! I currently use Google alerts, but I had no idea that there were so many conditions you could place on the alerts. This will be very helpful, both in terms of tracking my niches and in terms of identifying “hot areas”
Thanks!
.-= Darvin @ Organic Food Coupons´s last blog ..Do Follow Blog, Comment, Keyword Luv and Top Commenter =-.
Darvin, I’m glad I could help. Hopefully you can take this idea and add it to your Niche toolbox. If you come up with some other great Google Alert configurations, please come back and share them.
Nicely written page. Did you take any writing classes?
Thanks for the kind comment. I took the basic writing classes in school. Nothing special though.
Wow I would have never thought to use Google Alerts like that, thanks for the heads up. Hopefully I can use it to cut down on my research time. Thanks again.
.-= Tom@Night Vision Goggles´s last blog ..Thermal Imaging Equipment =-.
You are welcome Tom. I hope this tip helps you out.
Sounds like a pretty cool idea. I copied the generic code for all of the articles into the Google search box, but got the following error:
Your search – site:ezinearticles.com “This article has been viewed 2000..199999″ “Article Submitted On: July *, 2010″ – did not match any documents.
Am I doing something wrong?
Hmmm…
Shawn, try copying and pasting this code and replace it with your keyword. Let me know if it works.
abs site:ezinearticles.com "This article has been viewed 2000..199999" "Article Submitted On: * *, 2009"Works now .. Thx for your help
Yes, posting on Ezine articles is very important for Internet marketing.
Edward, I agree. I have seen some great results from the article marketing I have done.
So the Ezine search code doesn’t work with a month, only the year?
Jack it will work with a month as well. You just need to replace the first * with the month.
So for March of 2009 you would use
"make money online" site:ezinearticles.com "This article has been viewed 2000..199999" "Article Submitted On: March *, 2009"
It's an excellent idea to keep an eye on what i need. I will try this. and Thanks for the information about this Google alert technique.
You're welcome!
You’re welcome!