At any given moment in time, billions of data transactions are taking place online. New content is constantly being published on blogs, social media streams, and news, and some of that information is related to subjects you are interested in.
Is there a free and simple way to know what is new in your industry or niche that will save you time doing research? Yes, there is, and it’s called …
Google Alerts
(You can monitor the web for new content with Google Alerts)
Get free alerts whenever there are new results for your searches, so you can monitor social media conversations, news, and websites.
Google Alerts is not only only a useful social media monitoring tool for helping you manage your reputation online, but also for automatically sourcing the latest news about people, brands, companies, or any other subject you need to know about.
With Google Alerts, you just subscribe to a keyword or topic and you’re done. Whenever Google’s indexing bots (Googlebot) crawl a new web page, press release, news update, blog post, a tweet, video, or any other indexable content related to that topic, you will automatically receive an email or RSS update.
A Quick And Easy Guide On Setting Up A Google Alert
Basically, there are only three simple steps required to start using Google Alerts:
Step 1 – Log Into Your Google Account
If you haven’t got a Google account, create one. Google lets you access many free services with just one username and password. If you use Gmail, post videos to YouTube, run a pay-per-click advertising campaign with Adwords or own a GooglePlus page, then you should already have a Google account set up.
(Use your Google Account to access services like Google Alerts)
You can still set up Google Alerts without a Google Account, but this gives you fewer configuration options (e.g. you can’t receive Google Alerts via RSS, only email).
After logging into into your Google Account, access the Google Alerts tool by entering the following URL into your browser:
Step 2 – Set Up An Alert
Set up alerts for every topic, business, person or website you want to track. You can track brands, names of employees, influencers, competitors, investors, celebrities, etc. There are no limits to how many alerts you can set up.
(Google Alerts lets you create as many alerts as you like)
Step 3 – Set Up Your Preferences And Save
You can specify the keyword or keywords you want alerts for, how often alerts should be sent out (as it happens, once a day, once a week), sources (e.g. automatic, news, blogs, web, videos, discussions, etc.), language, region, how many (all results, only the best results), and how to receive alerts (via email or RSS feed) …
(Google alert preferences)
If you want to narrow where Google sources the information for your alerts, select the source from the drop-down menu …
(Google alert sources)
You can also specify the delivery time of your alerts in your settings, and if you want to receive all alerts as a single email …
(Google alert settings)
You can change these settings at anytime.
You should begin receiving alerts as set in your preferences …
(Receive alerts via email or RSS)
Note that at the bottom of your email notification, you are given various options, including:
- See more results
- Edit the alert
- Unsubscribe (stop receiving the alert)
- View all your alerts
- Receive the alert as RSS feed
How To Set Up Google Alerts While Browsing Google News
You can easily set up Google Alerts while browsing the web. Here’s how:
Go to Google News and type in your search term …
(Enter a search term in Google News)
Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on ‘Create Alert’ …
(Google News – Create Alert)
This brings you to the Google Alerts screen. Enter your email address and click on ‘Create Alert’ …
(Google Alerts screen)
If you elect to receive alerts via email, you will be asked to verify your Google Alert request …
(Verify your Google Alert request)
After confirming your request, your Google Alert will be set up and you will begin to receive alert notifications via email.
(Your Google Alert has been successfully verified)
You can return to the Google Alerts home page and create as many alerts as you want.
Deleting Google Alerts
You can delete any alerts you no longer want to receive …
(Google alert settings)
You can also stop receiving alerts by clicking on the ‘Unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of your emails …
(Click the Unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email)
Confirm that you want to unsubscribe from your Google Alert …
(Click unsubscribe to stop receiving Google Alerts)
Your Google Alert will be cancelled …
(Google Alert cancelled)
You will no longer receive alert emails on the topic from Google after unsubscribing.
If you want to receive alerts via email, you can configure rules in your email program to automatically send all alerts to one or more email folders. This will help to keep your alerts organized and easier to sort through.
If your alerts are sent out via RSS feed, you can use a feed reader to view the information on your smartphone or mobile device.
Once your alerts are set up, you can monitor information about keywords, your business, competitors, etc., or start creating web content about the latest news in your topic of choice.
How To Publish News Items From Google Alerts On Your Site
You can publish news items directly from Google Alerts on your WordPress your blog as blog posts or as a ‘widgetized’ item on your sidebar.
Let’s take a look at both methods:
Publish Google Alerts News Items As A Blog Post
To display news items from Google Alerts as a blog post, do the following:
Configure your site to post by email …
(Post to WordPress by email)
If you need help with this step, see this tutorial:
Next, create an Alert to send to the email address you have set up …
(Create Alert and send to email)
Alerts will now be posted to your blog, or come in as ‘drafts’ that you can review and publish.
Publish Google Alerts News Items On Your Sidebar
To display news items from Google Alerts as a as a ‘widgetized’ item on your sidebar, all you need to do is set up to receive your alerts as an RSS feed as described earlier …
(Receive alerts as an RSS feed)
Next, copy the RSS feed link to your clipboard …
(Copy RSS link address)
And add the RSS feed to an RSS widget as described in this tutorial:
Your alert will display as a ‘widgetized’ item on your sidebar and the feed will update regularly as Google sources new items …
(RSS Widget with Google Alert feed)
Hopefully, this post has been useful. To learn more about using social monitoring tools to improve your business online, see this article: WordPress And Social Media – Useful Resources For Monitoring Social Activities
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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