Day 27 - Part III - Google Alerts | Mike Mindel

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Day 27 - Part III - Google Alerts

By Mike Mindel | August 28, 2007

This content is summarized from Day 27 Training - Google Alerts - A Hidden Jewel in the Google Kingdom, presented by Rob Somerville.

What is it?

Google Alerts is a fantastic free service from Google that allows you to be notified when Google finds a web page containing a specific keyword you might be interested in.

I use this in three different ways.

Finding New Niche Content

Firstly Google Alerts allows me to find web pages which have some content related to a specific keyword in my niche or something I might be interested in.

Keep Track of Individuals

Google Alerts also allows me to track down mentions of certain people or individuals I wish to stay notified about.

Keep Track of Content Distribution

I also Google Alerts to track the distribution of unique content I have created using a specific keyword or unique identifier.

An Example

You may have noticed I occasionally refer to myself as gurubob. Besides being an egotistical view of my status in the universe, I found a keyword that was unique in Google that nobody else was using except for me. That way every time I create content and specifically incorporate the keyword gurubob in that content and do a search for that keyword in Google, the websites that come back are likely to be related to the content I’ve created.

Let’s head on over to Google and search for gurubob

See that Google has found my gurubob web page on my corporate domain here

But it’s also find my twitter feed here

What it’s also found is most of my social bookmarking accounts where I’ve used the keyword gurubob as the username.

If I use a specific keyword I might be excited to check in the beginning but then after time forget go back to Google and search for it. But Google Alerts sends me an email from Google every time it finds a new web page with this specific keyword.

Gurubob probably only shows up related to content I’ve produced. But if I’m looking for a niche keyword e.g. ‘wedding planning checklist’ then it will notify me of pages that relate to that.

How Does Google Alerts Work

You go to http://www.google.com/alerts/

The page says it’s a BETA service but has been beta for well over a while and works great.

You enter a search term here

what type of alert you want

indicate if you want a ‘Comprehensive’ review of pages of that search phrase or blogs, news pages etc. Also choose how often you want to be notified e.g. once a day, as-it-happens or once a week.

So if we want to be notified on websites about “wedding planning” (put keyword phrases in quote marks for an exact match)

and the Google Alert has been created

I will now get notified of any web pages with “wedding planning” in the web page copy as it happens.

(Note: Google Alert will send a verification email to your email address to make sure you are you).

Over to GMail

So if you head on over to your GMail account you can see that Google Alert confirmation

You’ll notice I’m using a feature of GMail here which is turned on via the settings. I’m using filters. All of the Google Alerts come from a specific address inside Google so I have a filter set up for those Google Alerts. Please refer to Tip #9 - Set Up a Separate GMail Account for a brief tutorial on how to setup your own filter.

Adding a Google Alerts Filter

All Google Alerts now drop into an archive which has been labeled ‘Google Alerts’. This makes them easy to see them all in one place.

I have alerts for a few different things. I like to keep track of some of the content that Ed produced but I also like to keep track of people mentioning Ed on their own websites

Here’s a blog post about Ed

and one of Ed’s post on the Thirty Day Challenge blog

Ed Dale is referenced in the blog authorship and that comes up in the Google Alert. Here’s another post from ‘Home With Heather’ who mentions Ed on her blog

Keeping Track of Linking Content

Let’s say for instance I was creating some linking content which links back to a website that I want to gain authority for then I can use a specific keyword in that linking content. E.g. a blog comment with a name with a specific keyword unique to me and unique to the niche.

I can use the same trick when making a forum post and making sure my specific keyword is in the signature of the post. When Google finds that linking content I will be notified by Google Alerts.

Google will give me a link to the content it has found. Then I can go to that page, social bookmark that page with the social bookmarking services we have taught you earlier in the Thirty Day Challenge.

This is a good way of finding pages that have niche relevant content, a way of staying notified on people that you want to stay notified about. But it also a way of establishing when Google finds content of yours that you’ve created for a specific purpose and then quickly going to that indexed page and social bookmarking it to increase the distribution of that linking content wider within the social networks.

It’s a fantastic service and I can’t recommend it more highly. It allows you to be very efficient about keeping track of content and people. It also allows you to observe the distribution of your content as it gets picked up by Google and by other people online.

You can find Google Alerts here: http://www.google.com/alerts/

-Rob

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