You have probably heard the term “Google is your friend”, and if not let me be the first to tell you that I did not coin it. 

One of the many tools that Google has in their arsenal that they allow you to use for free is Google Alerts. It is a tool that I have been using for quite some time, and so I thought I would share just a few of the things I use it for with you.

But before I begin and for those who may be unfamiliar with Google Alerts, let me give a brief rundown on what it does and how it works.

This is an application created in 2003 by Google engineer Naga Sridhar who grew tired of visiting Google’s News to check on developments for the then imminent war with Iraq, so he wrote this app to send him email alerts when matching terms he entered came across the news wires. Pretty snazzy creation, huh?

When you set up an alert by placing your word or term in quotes, it will find an exact match and return the results to you via email. You can even specify how often you want to be notified with three options, once daily, once weekly or live as it happens.

If you have a Google account, you are already setup to use this. If not, you can register for an account at any Google stop along the internet by clicking the sign-in button. This will provide an opportunity to create a new account. But we will begin with the topic at hand. The URL is http://Google.com/alerts and that should be noted because if you type in googlealerts.com you will land at a 3rd party site that offers a similar service instead of the site shown below.

In the “type” drop down menu you have several selections: news, blogs, web, comprehensive, video and groups. The comprehensive selection searches all others. The email length selection provides two choices 20 and 50 results respectively.

Enter you email address and you have set up your first alert, leaving only the confirmation process to be completed. In your email you must click a link to confirm the request for this information, much the same as subscribing to a blog.

For most searches, be certain to enclose your term in “quotes” to avoid a broken string of feedback for each and every word. If you enter three words and leave off the quotes, you will in effect have set up three searches combined into one, not your desired result. There are some command type searches that do not require the quotes and I will cover a couple of them as well.

So let’s move on to those tips I talked about at the top.

1. Begin by setting up a search for your name or the name of your business (“Jane Public”). Anytime this comes across the internet it will be captured and delivered to your email inbox according to the “How often” selection you made. Cool way of monitoring what is being said about you or your business.
2. Want to find some of your scraped content? Extract up to 32 words from your content (allowed limit) and enter them between the quotation marks. I sometimes use what I call “tracker phrases” with an intentional typo or unique arrangement. What are the chances of someone else having those same thoughts and making the same error?
3. Shoppers, here is how you can save a little money. Set up several alerts with your favorite store or market and enter “sale”, “coupon”, “discount” or “code”. You can do this in one string by using the “OR” command (Sale OR coupon). The OR must be in caps. If something new is posted regarding those terms, you will have a same day notice about it.
4. Find other sites that are related to you own, according to Google. Simply enter related: your blognamehere.com (your actual site name), this is one of those commands that requires no quotes.
5. Enter link:yourblognamehere.com to be alerted when someone links to your site.

I could go on and on with these, but you can see how this works so use your own imagination and have some fun with it. You can have up to 1000 alerts set-up, which will not leave much time for blogging, but the tool is near limitless.

Be sure to cancel any alerts no longer needed to keep from becoming overwhelmed with email, get enough of that stuff already I would bet. Used properly, this is a powerful tool that you can use to your advantage.

Here are a few other ideas:

• Find job listings
• Follow the latest news on your sports team or individual player
• Find for sale or rental property in a certain area
• Follow the development news for a new tech product
• Find some ideas for blog posts

Just think of the many ways that you can put this to use. For additional help you can visit the Google Alerts FAQ Page, or drop me a line on my Contact Page.

I hope this article stimulated some thoughts for you. If you found this type of article to be useful, let me know in the comments section below. In the meantime…

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