Nora Brown Design

Using Google Alerts

Google Alerts are a tool for monitoring what is happening on the web. They alert you whenever there are new Google search results for the terms you specify. You can receive alerts in your email inbox, or sign up for them via RSS.

What to track with Google Alerts

A few things you might think of tracking:

• Your name and/or company name
• Competitors’ names
• New stories
• A book or publication name

If you only want to see results for the complete phrase,

Also keep in mind that you can use any of Google’s special search operators. So you could do on a alert for something like link:www.norabrowndesign.com to be alerted when Google has found a new site that links to yours.

How to set up a Google Alert

To set up a Google alert, just visit google.com/alerts, and fill out the options. In the “Type” field, you can narrow the alert to only Videos, Blogs, etc. You may also have to adjust the frequency, depending on the popularity of your site, so that you don’t get a constant stream of annoying emails.

Once you have one or more alerts set up, you can manage them by visiting google.com/alerts/manage.