Stay Up To Date With Google Alerts

Do you have a blog or a website that requires you to keep on top of the latest happenings in your niche? Would you like to be notified when somebody writes a post or an article about a keyword of yours? With Google Alerts you can get this information and more. Many of you know Google as a search engine but they have a huge list of other services that they provide for free.

I personally use Google Alerts for a web hosting review site of mine so that I can keep on top of the latest information regarding the web hosting industry and it’s happenings. But honestly, you can use Google Alerts for any keyword or phrase. I also use it to keep track of the web hosts that I have listed on my site so that I can update their information whenever they provide a new feature or hosting plan.

Using Alerts allows you to set up keywords or phrases that you want to be notified about when they are talked about on the web. So lets dive right in and I’ll explain more about it while showing you how to setup an alert.

First off, lets head on over to the Google Alerts page. One of the best things about using Alerts is that you don’t even have to be registered with Google or any of their services. All that you need is your search terms, the type of alert you would like, how often you want to be notified and your email.

Figure out what you want to be tracking and enter it into the first input box labeled Search terms. Next you will want to select where you want Google to grab the information from. You have 6 options to choose from:

1. News
2. Blogs
3. Web
4. Comprehensive
5. Video
6. Groups

The News alert is just that, the news. When a news site releases an article that is related to your search term and that site is listed in the top 10 search results for your term using a Google News search, you will be sent an email.

The Blogs alert notifies you when a blog listed in the top 10 search results for your term in Google Blogs search makes a post.

The Web alert sends you an email when a website listed in the top 20 search results for your term publishes an webpage.

Comprehensive is a mix of News, Web and Blogs giving you the best bet for your money. You can set up one alert and get information from multiple sources.

A Video alert lets you know when a video is posted that is within the top 10 results for your search term using Google Video Search.

Last but not least is the Groups alert. When somebody makes a new post in Google Groups within the top 50 spots for your search terms, Google will notify you.

If you are a little bit lost by what I mean when I refer to the top results based on your search term, let me explain a little bit further. Normally when you head to Google and perform a search, you are given a list of the 10 most relevant web sites or pages related to your search term. The Web alert uses this exact same method except it is fully automated and whenever one of those pages listed in the top 10 results publishes a new article, you can be instantly notified. Same goes with all of the other types, it is just that some alerts look past the first page of results.

After deciding where you want your information to come from you are given your next choice to choose when you want a notification sent to you. There are 3 options here; once a day, as-it-happens and once a week. These options are pretty self-explanatory so I don’t think I need to go over them, although I do wonder why anybody would choose once a week. To be successful you need to stay on top of things and get information out before it becomes saturated and old news.

I personally use as-it-happens as my alert type. Depending upon your niche, you maybe decide that just once a day is good enough. Also, a small warning, if you choose a very popular search topic, prepare to have your inbox full of emails. I am using quite a few alerts related to my web hosting site so I end up receiving about 100 emails a day just with alerts.

Last but not least is where you want the Google Alert sent to. Just enter in your email address and click Create Alert. Thats it! Depending upon your search term and how soon you want to be notified you may end up seeing an alert sooner then you think. I personally would recommend using as-it-happens that way I can be instantly notified within a few minutes whenever a site or blog publishes something about my search term.

Should you have an account already with Google, you can login and manage your alerts allowing you to change the search term, type and how often you are notified. Pretty damn simple huh? As you can see, Google Alerts is a really great way to keep on top of the current happenings in your niche.

You can even use it to keep track of your name, your domain name, a business, a person, pretty much anything that you can think of. A good option would be to keep an alert for your domain name to ensure that should somebody decide to put you down, you can find the author and hopefully find a solution to the problem.