Tracking Yourself Online:
The Power of Google Alerts

Think Google is just a gigantic search engine that knows everything about everything? Think again. Turn Google to your advantage to track what homeowners and competitors are saying about you online.

A lot of people believe that Google sees all, knows all. They’re watching your every move online. And they know everything that the general public is saying about you.

I’ll give you no argument. Google is indeed the online equivalent of Big Brother. But now, there’s a simple (FREE, no less) way for you to know everything that Google knows about your business.

They’re called Google Alerts, and they’re a great tool for every home improvement company that wants to monitor how their name is used on the Web.

In short, Google Alerts allow you to monitor online news, postings or pages that contain whatever keyword or phrase you would like. If that phase is the name of your home improvement company, bingo! You’ve got instant visibility to what’s being posted about it online. When Google finds a new reference to your particular phrase, you’ll get an e-mail alerting you.

I recommend home improvement companies set up Google Alerts for phrases that include your company’s name, your own name and even those of your direct competitors. For instance, we have a Google Alert set up for Keyword Connects, alerting us any time that one of our press releases is posted, our name is mentioned on another Web site, or one of our content items (like this blog) is indexed by Google’s computers.

Think about it: now you can easily and constantly monitor your company’s name and reputation online. Moreover, you can do the same for your rivals.

How do you set up a Google Alert? First, establish a GMAIL e-mail account; don’t worry, they’re free.

Next, read about how to set up a Google Alert on eHow. In summary:

Go to the Google Alerts page. Enter the keyword(s) for the alert(s) that you want to set up, (your company name, competitors’ names, etc.).
Select the type of alert you want to receive. Choose the comprehensive alert to retrieve news from blogs, news sources, Google Groups messages and Web sites. You can also choose to get results from only one of these sources, instead of all sources.
Choose how often Google will send the alerts to you. Google can send your alerts as soon as it finds a match to your keyword, once daily or only once a week.
Enter the e-mail address that you will use for your alerts. If you don’t have a Google email account, you will need to register for one; see above.
Click “Create Alert” when you are finished entering your keywords, sources and alert frequency.

After you’ve been running for a few weeks, review your alerts and revise your settings if you receive too much or too little information. To do so, log into your Google Alerts page. Choose “Manage Alerts” to edit the alerts you have on file. Delete alerts that you no longer need.

You may also wish to change your sources to refine the results that Google sends to you.

Also use Google’s search limiters, like quotation marks, to narrow the content of your alerts. Otherwise, you will receive an overwhelming amount of information from every source that contains your keywords.

So while Google may be Big Brother, you know what they know about you. Over the course of time, you’ll receive information about yourself and your competitors that you never would have known about, and certainly wouldn’t have been able to respond to.

Google Alerts: they’re a no-brainer for any smart businessperson.