Google Alerts is a free monitoring tool that notifies you whenever Google indexes a new page or any type of relevant content that contains a keyword or phrase specified by you.

This process isn’t real time, and the media monitoring tool doesn’t exactly work like a daily newsletter because it can take Google a few days to index new pages as they’re created. However, for many social media marketing experts or online reputation managers, using Google Alerts is almost as good as getting real-time updates on important issues from all over the web.

Having alerts delivered directly to you ensures that you won’t miss any obscure or out-of-the-way results or news story for your keyword that don’t show up in Google’s first few pages. And, of course, it’s a lot quicker and easier to receive an update alert than it is to repeatedly search for a term on Google yourself.

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH GOOGLE ALERTS?

1. Track Your Company’s Brand

You can receive Google alerts when people are talking about your company online, whether they’re saying positive or negative things.

2. Track Your Competitors

Sure, you need to receive alerts to know what people are saying about you and your company — but it’s equally important to monitor the web for new developments that involve your closest competitors.

3. Monitor Your Keywords

Google Alerts can help you strengthen your keyword strategy by showing you how other people are using your main keywords.

HOW TO SET UP GOOGLE ALERTS

1. Visit https://alerts.google.com/. You’ll set and manage all your alerts from this page.
2. Type your desired search term into the box.
3.  Click “Show options” to tailor your alerts. You can filter your results by delivery frequency, sources, language, region, and quality. You can also use the “Deliver to” drop-down to specify whether your results should show up in your Google account or your RSS feed.
4. Hit “Create alert.” You’ll start getting notifications for your alerts right away.
5.  Come back to the Google Alerts page when you need to manage or update your alerts. You can delete an alert or change its settings at any time.

SUMMARY

Google Alerts is one of the easiest tools that marketers or social media managers can use. And because it’s so important to be aware of what people are saying about your business online, there’s no good reason not to use Google Alerts.

If you don’t already have Google Alerts set up, take a few minutes to start tracking your most important names and keywords today. You might be surprised at what you find!