Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a service from Google that few people seem to know about and are not using.

Like many of Google's services, it is free.

So what is it?

In a nutshell, Google sends you email alerts every time it finds some new content that interests you.

To tell it what interests you is really simple. You just give it a search phrase exactly as you would if you were doing a normal search in Google. Whenever Google then indexes a new page that has this search phrase it will send you an email with the web address of the page.

Whilst this is great if you wanted to keep track of a particular topic of interest, it is extremely powerful for website owners who want to see where their website is being mentioned. By simply using your website name (or address) as the search phrase, you can get regular updates as pages are indexed that refer back to your website.

You can use this powerful tool to help boost your links. I explain how in my Link Building with Google Alerts tip

With Google Alerts you can enter your search terms with all the usual filters you use in normal Google. For example, putting quotes around phrases.

In addition, you can filter the alerts to only look at blogs, news sites, web pages and more.

It's very powerful and I would certainly recommend you take a look at it soon. Here's the link:

Google Alerts