Knowledge is power, but searching for knowledge is not always the easiest nor the most pleasant of tasks. Google offers a free service called "Google Alerts" that professionals can use to examine the presence of their company and competitors online. As and when a new web page is published, the service sends you an email for your relevant search terms. It picks up the relevant pages from the well known websites. That is, it alerts you with the knowledge you are in search for.

Google Alerts lets you monitor the news, blog, web, groups for your online entities and even your competitors references.



Google Alerts offers 6 variations of alerts

• News - an email aggregate of the latest news articles that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google News search.

• Web - an email aggregate of the latest web pages that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top twenty results of your Google Web search.

• Blogs - an email aggregate of the latest blog posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Blog search.

• Comprehensive - an aggregate of the latest results from multiple sources (News, Web and Blogs) into a single email to provide maximum coverage on the topic of your choice.

• Video - an email aggregate of the latest videos that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Video search.

• Groups - an email aggregate of new posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top fifty results of your Google Groups search

How to use Google Alerts?
Access Google Alert : Visit the Google Alert service and give search topic of your interest as for example you are looking for all relevant and updated information about "Maruti Alto" then you need to give it as a phrase to search for and keep you updated.

Select type of Alert : You can choose the type of alerts you want from Google by selecting either of News, Blog, Web, Comprehensive, Video and Groups.

How Often you want to receive alerts : You can set up that how frequently (once a day, as it happens or once a week) you would like to receive lists of any new references to that search term (or phrase) which are found by Google’s spiders.

Confirm your Email and Create an Alert : You'll receive an email from Google to the address you used for the alert.


Tips to Use Google Alerts Like an Expert

1. Link Monitoring : Provides you with alerts anytime your website's URL is provided as a link from other websites.
This can be done by setting up the search term as "link:http://www.sitename.com".

2. Brand Monitoring : Alerts you when your brand name is discussed about on news, blogs, forums and any other online sources.

3. Track Your Products : I have alerts set up for "Silver rings", "Maruti Swift" and Tata Nano. This is a good way to stay informed about how many bloggers are writing about products you want to track.

4. Track Your Competitors : Staying tuned to the newest changes in your industry and knowing what your competitors are up to gives you a leg-up in the competition. Creating an alert that involves your competitor or your industry will allow you to stay ahead of the competition.