We are often asked, is there a way to track mentions of a website or a brand? and can you keep track of your competitors?
With Google Alerts, you can easily see what people are saying about your brands or what others are doing in your industry.
In this article, we’ll show you how to set up Google Alerts in 2 minutes or less. and we’ll also explain how you can use these alerts to grow your business.
what are google alerts?
google alerts is a tracking tool that sends you instant email notifications of any search term or phrase you want to track.
is a free service from google that’s great for monitoring brand reputation and listening to what users have to say about your products and services.
so how many google alerts can you have?
You can have up to 1000 alerts per gmail account. and if you’re wondering if you can set up google alerts without gmail, unfortunately that’s no longer possible.
But creating a gmail account is very simple and it’s free. With that, let’s see how easy it is to set up google alerts.
how to configure google alerts?
just follow these steps and you can track your website, brand name, address, keyword or any phrase you want.
step 1: open the google alerts site
To get started, go to the google alerts page where you can add new alerts and manage them. Once you are on the site, sign in with your google account.
step 2: enter your search term or phrase
Next, enter the search terms you want to track in Google Alerts. If you want to customize your alert settings, click show options and then change them to suit your needs.
Here’s a quick summary of each of these options:
- how often: You can select when you want to receive the alerts, such as once a day, once a week, or when it happens.
- source: google alerts allows you to select the source of the alert and it can be news, blog, web, video, book, discussion or finance. if you are not sure of the source, leave the option on automatic.
- language: choose the language of your alert.
- region : you can specify the location of your alerts or you can set it to any region where it will bring you alerts from all over the world.
- how many: with this option you can select only the best results or all results to appear in your inbox.
- deliver to: select the email address for your google alerts.
Once you’re happy with your settings, go ahead and select create alert.
step 3: check your google alerts
now you can see your google alerts in your inbox. go to your google account and open gmail. the email will contain links to the latest content published on the web for your alert search term.
with google alerts set up, how can you use them to grow your business? let’s find out…
what can you do with google alerts?
google alerts are more than just a tracking tool. you can use them to get information about your website and your competitors. here’s how:
1. monitor mentions of your brand for negative reviews
With Google Alerts, you can manage your brand reputation by receiving instant notification every time someone mentions your website or products.
helps you see what people are saying about your brand. and if there are comments or negative comments, you will know about it immediately and can resolve it.
Similarly, data is valuable in knowing where you need to improve and what new features you can add to your products.
2. find unique angles for your keywords
google alerts can help you with your site’s seo (search engine optimization) by showing you what others are typing about your target keywords.
This is especially helpful if you’re trying to come up with new topic ideas or angles to make your content stand out.
By receiving regular updates on the content being published on the web around those queries, you will be able to create better content than the rest.
for example, it allows you to write about the latest technology and receive an alert about the latest news. when you add that news to your content, it could differentiate it from other search results and send positive signals to the search engine.
3. track your competitors’ marketing efforts
One of the easiest ways to know what your competitors are doing is to set up google alerts. helps you spy on their marketing tactics.
for example, you can set up competitor mentions by simply adding your website name, products, owner and other company representatives, address, and more.
That way, whenever someone mentions them on the web, you’ll know what they’re all about. this way you can find backlink opportunities by approaching the same website that linked to your competitor.
4. identify new content ideas from your competitors
By keeping track of your competitors, you can also find new content ideas for your website. instead of creating alerts for your brands, you can enter the url of your blog page.
This way, Google Alerts will send you a notification every time they post new content. then you can identify content gaps on your website and create better content on the same topic as your competitors.
5. stop theft and piracy of your products
If you are selling intellectual property of any kind online, such as plugins, software, e-books or courses, then you must have run into the problem of piracy.
It is very difficult to monitor the internet to see if your products have been stolen. this is where google alerts come in handy.
You can set up alerts for your brands, you can easily track websites and people who might have hacked your property, and then you can take action against them.
final words
google alerts are great for monitoring your website, keywords and competitors. If you’re starting a new website, then the free tool can give you tons of useful information.
and with that, you’ve reached the end of the guide.
We hope you liked our article on how to set up google alerts in 2 minutes or less. If you want, you can also check out our guide on woocommerce conversion tracking.
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