What do people say on the web about your company? Google Alerts keeps you updated

You are probably familiar with Google’s “Google Alerts” service. Upon request, Google notifies you by e-mail when a new article is published on a given subject. But did you also know that, when you enter the name of your company or your competitor’s company, you can use this service to check what people say on the web concerning your company or your competitors’ companies? You can of course also enter keywords related to your product in order to stay informed about the latest developments. However, make sure to choose your keywords carefully and don’t make them too vague, otherwise you’ll be flooded with notifications. It’s best to experiment a little until you found the right combination of keywords.

How to proceed? Go to Google Alerts, enter the keywords of your choice and pick a category amongst the following: "news" (only news articles that contain your search string), "web" (the latest web pages), "blogs" (blogs only), "comprehensive" (a combination of the three aforementioned categories), "video" (video footage only) and "groups" (news groups only). With each one of these categories, you’ll only receive the top 10 results featured in the Google search service for this search string.

If you want your search to be even more precise, you can enter advanced search strings, as explained on Advanced Search. Finally, you fill in your e-mail address as well as the frequency with which you would like to receive the notifications (once a day, once a week, as they occur). Subsequently, you’ll receive another e-mail from Google, which you have to reply to in order to confirm your subscription.