Do you know what Google Alerts are? If so, do you know how to set them up?
Let’s first go over the first question.
Google alerts are a way for you to monitor content on the web. For instance if you wanted to monitor the term “cheap web hosting” you could set up a Google alert and you would be notified via email every time new content was discovered with the phrase “cheap web hosting”.
You may be thinking…”just what I need more spam”. Well, hold on for a minute.
You don’t need to monitor such broad phrases or subjects. Let me show you an example of how I use it.
I have an alert set up for my domain “erictransue.com”. By having this alert set up, I know when new pages of my site are indexed by Google. I also receive updates when other pages on the web reference my site, or if there are discussions about my site on blogs or forums. Now do you see the power of Google Alerts?
I can now quickly stay up to date with all the news about my site without running manual queries in the search engine.
Take a second to think about some of the uses.
Do you submit articles to article directories? If so do you know which sites are picking up your articles. By setting up a Google Alert you would immediately know when another site picked up your article. This is just one example of the many ways you can put Google Alerts to work for you.
Some other uses are…
* monitoring a developing news story
* keeping current on a competitor or industry
* getting the latest on a celebrity or event
* keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams
