What is a Google Alert?

For years now I’ve used a tool from  Google that isn’t all that widely advertised– the Google alert. You can set alerts in Google and get emailed links to news stories and other search results every day (or even as-it-happens) when Google finds new results relevant to search keywords that you are interested in. It is an easy way to keep up with news stories related to a topic you are interested in (though if you choose a relatively common or generic term you may want to be sure to choose the once per day setting or you’ll get a lot of email from Google). If I see anything interesting come up in any of my Google Alerts I will share it with you here on this blog or on my twitter feed.

It may not be practical for you to monitor lots of different search topics via Google Alerts. However, one thing you might want to consider is setting up a Google Alert for your name as well as any of your business names. That way you can keep track of anything that is being written about you and/or your business(es) online.

You can set up your Google Alerts at https://www.google.com/alerts