Google Alerts Part 1: Getting Set Up

Posted on 19. Apr, 2010 by

Most web marketers I know use Google Alerts.  But in case you’re new to the party, or want to expand your reach, make sure to keep reading.

Google Alerts is a tool that notifies you when a webpage online publishes something that matches the search query or topic you specify.  Basically it’s a way to have search engine results delivered to you instead of you physically typing them in to a search engine.  You choose the search term or phrase, and Google will proactively deliver new pages they find that match your query.  It’s an extremely powerful tool.

Setting up an Alert

Here is a quick video (3:10) that explains how to get started:

Google Alert Basics:

The most basic alerts you can create are for your name, brand or website address formatted in the following way:

  • “Justin Smith”
  • “Affinity Cross Media”
  • affinityxm.com

Make sure you use quotes around a company name if it is a popular name, multi-word phrase, or commonly mistaken for something else.  This will make sure that you get specific results and don’t waste time weeding out the junk.  If you’ve never set up an alert before, I would recommend having them delivered once per day via email.  Just make sure you carve out some time to look through them, and take action if necessary.

Here are a few more tips to help you get started:

  1. Treat the Google Alerts search box like it’s a real Google search box.  In other words, go crazy.  You can search for just about anything you want.  Advanced users will get creative here and start using search operators.  If you don’t know what those are, take a look at this page.  An example would be {example phrase site:wikipedia.org}  that search would deliver alerts every time that phrase appeared on Wikipedia.org.  Get creative… the skies the limit here!
  2. When setting up an alert for your website.  Don’t just put in:  yourwebsite.com, make sure you enter other pages on your website that you want to track.  Maybe you’re trying to promote:  yourwebsite.com/specialoffer.  Make sure you create a new alert for it!
  3. For less important searches, set up delivery to be once per week.  If you have a lot of alerts set up like I do, you’ll be getting a lot of emails.  Make sure you don’t overwhelm yourself with too many.

Hopefully you have enough information to get started.  Setting up some basic alerts like this will allow you to keep an eye on what people are saying about you, your company, or your website.  In the next post of this 3 part series on Google Alerts, we will show you can manage your brand through online reputation management.