Are You Talked About on the Web?

Did you get that tin­gle on the back of your neck for no rea­son yes­ter­day?  Was some­one blog­ging about you?  Did some­one tweet some­thing with your name in it?  Know­ing what is said about you or your com­pany on the web is impor­tant — even more so if it is neg­a­tive!  There is a great way to eas­ily keep up with this infor­ma­tion.
Google has a lit­tle known fea­ture called Google Alerts.  It allows you to put in search terms and have Google send you an email either daily or weekly about those search terms.  All you need is a Google account.

Go to the Google Alerts home page after sign­ing in to your account.  It will look like the image below.

Google Alerts Page

There’s still one more trick!  Be sure to enter your name as the search term.  I used the Com­pre­hen­sive set­ting, but you can limit it to News, Blogs, Web and other items.   You can also choose once per day or once per week.  Weekly is fine with me, but maybe you want to check more often.  Press the Cre­ate Alert but­ton and you’ve done it!

Here’s the trick.  After you enter your name, make sure you enter some vari­a­tions.  Does every­one spell your name cor­rectly?  Do some use your mid­dle ini­tial?  What about your first and last name with no spaces?

Be cre­ative in search­ing for your name because not every­one types per­fectly, espe­cially on a phone.  This will help you catch infor­ma­tion you might oth­er­wise miss.

Stay­ing in touch with what oth­ers say on the web can be daunt­ing.  With Google Alerts, you can much more eas­ily stay in touch.