Use Google Alerts So You Aren’t the Last to Know

The Google Alerts service is one of many very helpful Google apps. It allows you to monitor the web for interesting new content and it will send you an email update of the relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:

• Being aware of your name or your firm name appearing in the new or on the web
• Monitoring a developing news story
• Keeping current on a competitor or industry
• Getting the latest on a celebrity or event
• Keeping tabs on your favourite sports teams

To create an alert, go to the Google Alerts page (www.google.com/alerts) and enter a text string that contains the name of the person or topic that you want to monitor (e.g., your name, your firm name, a client’s name or industry). Google Alerts will send an e-mail alert to you of Google news or Web search results based on the terms that you specified. You can configure it to deliver the alerts to you instantly, daily or weekly. On the news side, it searches several thousand news sources that the Google news page indexes. On the Web search side it searches all the Web pages that the Google search engine indexes.

On the Google site there are some great tips for getting just the alerts you really want to see.

Google Alerts is a great way to make sure you are aware if there is news or content posted on the Web that is about you, your clients, your firm or other topics of interest to you. In the past I have found it faster and more thorough than some of the commercial clippings services I have used.