Who’s Talking About You?

From Blogs to social media, forums to consumer review sites, the internet offers everyone a platform to sing praises and voice grievances. Do you know what’s being said about you?  Do you know what’s being said about your company, your products or your competitors? Tracking your online business interests is crucial.  I’ve found an easy and inexpensive way to do just that.

Taking a strategic approach to keyword monitoring can help you identify new sales opportunities, fine-tune your pay-per-click campaigns, track competitors, watch product lines, spot industry trends and monitor special interests. It can lead to incoming links, provide marketing materials, result in referrals, identify new business interests and help keep you apprised of who’s writing about you and your industry. Keyword monitoring can alert you to negative press, use of your trademarks and help track copyrighted materials. The sooner you know, the sooner you can take action.

Google’s GigaAlert scours the entire web for references to your personalized list of keywords. For instance, your personalized list should contain things like your name, company name, competitors, products, industry leaders and other special interests. GigaAlert is easy to set up but some care has to be taken with formatting the keywords.

Once set up, you will receive a daily emailed report, divided by keywords. Each entry has a short burst of text from and a link to the site containing to your keyword. GigaAlert allows you to mark each result as relevant or irrelevant, altering future site rankings.

I started using GigaAlert at the free level, monitoring up to 5 keywords. Since then, I’ve become addicted and upped our subscription level. I monitor all types of things like; our names, company name, products, blog and newsletter names. I keep an eye on various keywords and watch what’s happening with our competitors, partnering businesses and industry leaders.

Not every entry in the report is informative but you will be surprised where your name shows up; directories, news sites, blogs, social media pages and so forth. The service is easy to use and inexpensive, depending on the options you choose.  It is a tool that is well worth the investment! Take a look: www.GigaAlert.com