Using Google Alerts to your advantage

View All Articles By:   - Jeff Foster

View Company Profile: - WebBizIdeas.com

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Did you know that Google Alerts is a wonderful tool to stay ahead of others and get informed first? So much that, you get to know the news before the newspapers or the TV news channels. Unbelievable it may sound, but it’s true. Let’s take a deeper look into the world of Google alerts and how you can use them to our advantage.

So what are Google alerts meant for?

Google alerts are automated email messages sent from Google to anyone who has registered for it, for a particular term or subject, informing them of a new google result on that term or subject.

For example – If you register at Google alerts requesting them to send you email messages about “Kentucky chicken”, every time Google finds a page on the internet about “Kentucky chicken”, Google sends you an email with the website address and the information. Now, these are likely to be new web pages appearing on the web, like a news alert or a new story, whatever it is, whenever there is a mention of the keyword you suggested, you get an email.

The beauty about this service is that there are a lot of customizations possible like sending you an alert as and when it happens or sending you an alert on a daily basis.

Before we go any further, I’d recommend you go to www.google.com/alerts and have fun tweaking around, and then come back so that you have an idea on what’s up ahead.

More of a Visual Person - Watch This Tutorial

Some people learn better (myself) by seeing a tutorial. I have put together this article into a simple video for those who are left brained:

  Where do I start?

Starting to set up a Google alert is very easy.

Step 1

Go to the Google Alerts homepage here (www.google.com/alerts) and type in your search term in the box in the right hand side that says “Create a Google Alert”.(See pic)

Step 2

After entering the search term, select the “Type of alert” form the second option.

There are currently six types of alerts

• A 'News' alert is an email aggregate of the latest news articles that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google News search.
• A 'Web' alert is an email aggregate of the latest web pages that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top twenty results of your Google Web search.
• A 'Blogs' alert is an email aggregate of the latest blog posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Blog search.
• A 'Comprehensive' alert is an aggregate of the latest results from multiple sources (News, Web and Blogs) into a single email to provide maximum coverage on the topic of your choice.
• A 'Video' alert is an email aggregate of the latest videos that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Video search.
• A 'Groups' alert is an email aggregate of new posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top fifty results of your Google Groups search.

Step 3

Now, select when and how frequently you want Google to check for results on the selected keyword and email them to you. There are three options available.

• Once a day – In this option, Google checks for news results on the selected keywords at a specific time of the day, and email them to you once a day.
• As it happens - As obvious, Google will check and email the results as and when they are spotted. This could result in more frequent alert emails sent to your inbox depending on how popular the keyword is. For example, if the keyword you selected is “Obama”, you are likely to get lot of alert emails everyday as many websites are writing about it.
• Once a week – If you set this option, no matter the results appear daily or not, you will get email updates delivered once every week.

Here's how a Google alert email will look like in your inbox.

  Managing your alerts

Once an alert is set up, you will be taken to the “Alerts Manage” page where you can see your existing alert and manage them by editing/adding or even deleting them.

In the above screenshot, you’ll see a sample alerts management page. To the left, listed are the terms for which the alert is setup, to the right the type of alert and how often they are set.

Clicking on the “edit” button to the right will give you the option to

• Edit the alert keyword
• Change the alert type
• Change how often you receive alerts

General uses of Google alerts

Google alerts can be used for tracking news stories, see how popular a particular term is, finding movie reviews, track software release updates, tracking news announcements on a particular topic, or just about anything. For example, when you set an alert for “Kentucky chicken”, you’ll receive an alert email every time there is a mention of the word in any site appearing in the Google search results.

Some exceptional use of Google alerts for webmasters.

Google alerts can also be used for a few interesting purposes than just getting alerted for news or information. This is more helpful for webmasters, who have blogs and websites of their own, and would like to track search engine metrics to their websites.

For example, Google alerts can be used to track incoming links to a website. This is how we do it.

Let me give a brief introduction to an SEO (Search Engine Optimization Tutorial) metric to you. It’s a search engine operator that is used to find out how many other websites are linking to a website. Example:Searching on Google for “link:www.yoursite.com” without the quotes will give you the list of websites that are linking to www.yoursite.com

Using this, let’s create an alert so that whenever Google indexes a new link to your site, you get an email message right in your inbox.

• Step 1 – Go to www.gmail.com/alerts
• Step 2 – In the “Search terms” field enter – link:www.yoursite.com (replace with your own URL, see screenshot)
• Step 3 – In the “Type” option, select – Web. (If you want to get alerts from blogs, select Blog)
• Step 4 – Give your email id and hit “Create alert”. The final settings will look similar to the information seen on the screenshot(Replace yoursite.com with your URL).

Here's a screenshot of how the Google alert email looks like, showing you information of the site that just linked to you. Note that you have links to Remove, Create and Manage your alerts right beneath the information on the email.

That’s about it, whenever a site/blog links to your site and the link is indexed by Google, you’ll get an email, in your inbox notifying you about it. Ain’t that cool?

Increasing Traffic & Your Search Engine Rankings Using Google alerts

Another great way to use Google Alerts from an internet marketer’s point of view can be a little time consuming, but is 100% Free! Let me give you an example:

WebBizIdeas.com wants to rank to (1) be known for (2) rank well for the keyword phrase “Internet Business Ideas We use Google Alerts to be notified ANYTIME a new page is indexed that mentions that keyword. Usually we get Alerts for new blog articles written. So we go to the new blog article, READ IT, and then respond with a USEFUL comment. It is important that you post responses that contribute to the article, otherwise the blogger won't approve the response.

In order to become #1 for the keyword “Internet Business Ideas” WebBizIdeas.com needs to build as many backlinks as possible for that keyword. When we post blog responses we insert that keyword when it asks us for our name. So instead of putting Jeff Foster I put Internet Business Ideas

We use Google Alerts to be notified ANYTIME a new page is indexed that mentions that keyword. Usually we get Alerts for new blog articles written. So we go to the new blog article, READ IT, and then respond with a USEFUL comment. It is important that you post responses that contribute to the article…otherwise the blogger won’t approve the response.

When it asks for your URL we put in the web page we are trying to optimize for: http://www.ideas.webbizideas.com. All blogs default your name to your URL so by doing this we build back links.

  A Word of Caution

Do you notice anything different in the post below:

Why is WebBizIdeas highlighted in red? It is highlighted because I am viewing the post I made in Firefox using SEO For Firefox. You see most blogs default ALL blog comments as NO FOLLOW links. SEO For Firefox highlights all NO FOLLOW links in red.

Back a few years ago Google’s War on paid links & spam caused the industry to follow Google’s recommendation on adding NO FOllOW links to blogs & forums. The NO FOLLOW above basically means this link will not help us at all rank for the keyword “WebBizIdeas.”

View more information on NO Follow Links vs. DO Follow

So should this stop you from posting a comment? NO, 95% of all blogs have this attribute. I post comments on blogs when I have something to say. If I don’t have an opinion I don’t post a response. WebBizIdeas.com still receives traffic & brand awareness from the comments I post with NO FOLLOW Links; it is just an added bonus when that links counts double.