Google Alerts – know what people are saying about you online — automatically

What if you had your own, personal Google search engine that searched the far corners of the Web for the very things that interested you, automatically and then delivered the results to you at regular intervals each day or even as the terms appeared? Does this sound awesome? Well, you can almost have all of that with Google Alerts.

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. Enter the topic you wish to monitor, then click preview to see the type of results you’ll receive. Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:

  • monitoring a developing news story
  • keeping current on a competitor or industry
  • getting the latest on a celebrity or event
  • keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams.

I use Google Alerts to monitor what people are saying about me (reputation management), what people are saying about my clients and what is being said about topics that interest me (the mythical “iPhone 5” for instance). All that is required to get started is a Google Account. Take a look at the short video below where I demonstrate Google Alerts:

Posted by Shawn Roberts

On this blog, I write about and try to answer practical Oklahoma legal questions. My focus and most experience is in estate planning and business issues including Oklahoma non-compete law. I make a living as an attorney in the law firm I founded, Shawn J. Roberts, P.C. in Oklahoma City. I live in Edmond with my wife Amy and my two children, Sam (19) and David (11). We live precisely in the path of where the "wind comes sweeping down the plains."