How to set up google alerts
How to Set up Google Alerts
Do you want to monitor the web for mentions of
your name? Or perhaps your business? Or maybe even your competitor? Google Alerts can do this.
It’s simple to use.
You enter a word or phrase, and you’ll be alerted by email whenever Google
finds new mentions on the web.
Here’s what that email may look like:
a Google Alerts email for my name
But Google Alerts is
useful for more than just boosting your ego. Tracking mentions related to your
business or brand can unveil opportunities for link building, brand building, collaborations,
and more.
It’s a free tool
that’s well-suited to beginners. But, despite being owned by Google, it doesn’t
catch all web mentions.
How do we know? Because
we have a web monitoring tool called Ahrefs Alerts. When we ran a small
experiment to compare the number of results found by each tool, we found that,
on average, Ahrefs Alerts returned 2,376% more results.
You can read more
about this experiment at the end of this post.
But for now, let’s get back to what you came here for—setting up Google Alerts and using it to grow your business!
How to set up Google Alerts
1.
Go to google.com/alerts
2.
Enter a search term to
track. Google Alerts will display a results preview as you type.
3.
Select “Show options”
(below the search box). Choose how often you’d like to receive alerts: once a
day; as it happens; once a week.
4.
Choose a source for
your alerts: web; blogs; news; etc. If you’re unsure, leave this as the default
“automatic.”
5.
Choose a language and
region.
6.
Choose how many
results you want to see: “all results,” or “only the best results.”
7.
Choose a delivery
email address (this is where Google will send your alerts).
8.
Select “Create alert.”
Here’s an example Google Alert that tracks mentions of my name on the web:
Simple, right?
Now let’s go over a few actionable ways to use Google Alerts.
1. Monitor for unlinked mentions of your brand, then pursue them
People will sometimes
mention your brand without linking back to you.
Here’s an unlinked mention for Ahrefs:
This matters for two
reasons:
1.
Links
help you to rank in Google,
so you want as many high-quality links as possible if you
care about SEO (which you should!);
2.
Links
help people to navigate the web, meaning that unlinked mentions make it harder for readers to
reach your site. Should they wish to know more about your business, they will
probably have to resort to Googling you. Most people won’t bother to
do this.
With unlinked
mentions, you’re already halfway there. The author already knows who you are,
and it will often only take a small push to convert this mention to
a link.
But first, you need to
find unlinked mentions, which you can do with Google Alerts.
Just set up Google
alerts for any brand-related terms. You will then get an email when Google
finds new brand mentions on the web.
Here’s a Google Alert that monitors for mentions of our brand: Ahrefs.
(Yep, it’s that simple.)
Don’t stop there,
though. Set up multiple Google Alerts for all your brand-related terms.
Here are a few more
of ours:
·
ahrefs.com;
·
tim soulo;
Got an alert about new mentions? Check out the pages, view the source code (right-click > view page source), and search for yourdomain.com using CTRL/CMD+F.
No results = no link.
So consider reaching out to the author and asking for the link to
be added.
Learn more about how
to do this in our full guide to turning brand mentions into links.
SIDENOTE.
Even if there are no unlinked mentions,
you may want to jump in on the discussion about your brand or use the mention
as an opportunity to build a relationship. For example, if someone
mentions and links back to you, it may still be worth
commenting on that post and thanking them. You could even reach out via email to do so, if
appropriate.
PRO
TIP: MONITOR FOR NEGATIVE BUSINESS REVIEWS
No matter how hard you work to keep your
customers happy, you can’t please everyone.
Because of this, negative reviews can be a
problem for all businesses.
Monitoring brand mentions should uncover
negative reviews. But if your business gets mentioned a lot, these can be easy
to miss. It is, therefore, worth setting up a Google Alert just for reviews.
For that, you can use: [brand name] + intitle:review
This will alert you to any new reviews of your
business. Some of which may be negative.
Recommended reading: A 5‑Step Online Reputation Management Guide (That ANYONE Can Follow)
2. Monitor your competitors
Spying on your
competitors can unveil marketing tactics that you can use in your
business.
Maybe they’re doing
lots of guest posting, heavily promoting their
content, or even buying links!
SIDENOTE.
We advise against buying links, even if
your competitors are doing it!
Plus, if a site is
mentioning and linking to a competitor, they might also be willing to link to
you. You just need to reverse-engineer the reason for your competitor’s mention.
Here’s what a Google Alert might look like for one of our competitors
SIDENOTE.
Don’t forget that you can also set up
alerts for company representatives, branded products, etc. For example, if
you were Brian Dean—the founder of the popular SEO blog, backlinko.com—you’d
want to set up alerts for things like Brian Dean; SEO That
Works; Skyscraper Technique; etc.
Let’s take a look at one of the alerts Google shows us:
Without even looking
at the page, I can see that this is a list of SEO tips based on
advice from the founder of Backlinko, Brian Dean.
Do you see where I’m
going with this?…
… I’m sure the author
of this post may also be interested in publishing a similar article with advice
from myself or Tim Soulo.
But you can go even
further with this tactic by monitoring for pages that mention multiple
competitors, but not you.
Here’s what that might look like for MailChimp:
Why do this? If a page
mentions multiple competitors but neglects to include you, it presents an
opportunity to introduce you and your business to the site owner.
After all, they may not have even heard of your company, or there may be a specific reason they didn’t include you (in which case, the feedback could be insightful).
3. Keep an eye out for link injection hacks
Link injection spam is
one of the most common forms of website hacks.
This is where hackers
break into your website and inject nasty links into your site code, often
for SEO purposes. It’s a very black-hat tactic.
Here’s an example from a personal development blog:
Two things make it
clear that this is a maliciously injected link:
1.
Spammy. Not only does it link to a site in the
“healthcare” niche (a clear giveaway), the link also uses spammy, exact-match anchor text;
2.
Non-contextual. Read the sentence that contains the link. It
doesn’t make sense, at least not unless you ignore the link anchor text.
But unless you check
every page on your website for such issues on a regular basis, link injections
can be hard to spot. This is where Google Alerts comes in.
Just set up an alert
for a bunch of keywords synonymous with link injections. Restrict the results
to only those from your site.
You can use two search operators to do this: OR and site:
SIDENOTE.
Feel free to add more trigger keywords
to this query yourself.
If you receive an
alert from this query, always check out the pages for issues.
Use CMD/CTRL+F to locate the trigger word on the page quickly.
Just be aware that it will sometimes flag up false-positives, like so:
This is a legitimate mention of this word from our white-hat SEO guide. It’s not a link injection—in fact, this word isn’t even linked. It’s a false-positive.
4. Find a constant stream of new guest post opportunities
Most people use the
same tactic to find guest post opportunities:
1.
Find niche-relevant
“write for us” pages by searching Google for footprints like [topic] + intitle:”write for us” and [topic]
+ “become a contributor”;
2.
Scrape the results;
3.
Pitch.
Bluuurgh! This does
work, but be aware: these people get A LOT of pitches
like yours.
So it’s often better to use footprints like “guest post by” as doing so will unveil actual guest posts, like this:
You’d never find that
site (robbierichards.com) with the traditional operators, as Robbie
doesn’t have a “write for us” page.
Interesting, right?
But what has this got to do with Google Alerts?
Simple. You can use the same operators in Google Alerts to generate a never-ending stream of new guest post opportunities, like so:
Here’s a page unveiled by this alert, published on infobully.com:
SIDENOTE.
This site also doesn’t have a “write for
us” page, meaning that it’s yet another opportunity we wouldn’t usually find.
Neat. Here’s another
trick:
Having found that page
(above), I now know that Matt Diggity has written at least one
guest post. But most people don’t stop at just one guest post, they write for
many sites over time.
So let’s set up an alert for his name.
FYI: You’ll notice
that I excluded Matt’s site, diggitymarketing.com because any
mentions of his name there won’t be guest posts.
Google will now tell
us should Matt write any more guest posts.
Don’t want to wait for alerts? Try using the author: operator in Ahrefs’ Content Explorer to find past guest posts from Matt.
You can rinse and repeat these processes for any prolific guest posters in your niche.
5. Find new local NAP citation opportunities by monitoring your competitors
NAP citations are
super-important for local SEO.
Not sure what a NAP citation is? It’s a mention of your name, address, and phone number on a website. Here’s any example of one on Yelp:
You can get these for
your business in a few ways, like by finding your competitors
citations and stealing them.
To do this, search Google for something like “competitor name” + “competitor phone” + competitor address”
Doing so will bring up
any sites listing the NAP information for your competitor.
You can then add your business to that website too.
But here’s
the thing:
If your competitors
are actively engaged in SEO, they will likely be acquiring new,
potentially needle-moving citations all the time. You need to stay one step
ahead of them.
The solution? Set up a Google Alert for the same search as above.
You’ll now know
whenever your competitor gets a new NAP citation.
Rinse and repeat for
multiple competitors for maximum effect.
Recommended reading: Local SEO: A Simple (But Complete) Guide
6. Monitor (and answer) questions in your niche
Answering
industry-related questions can help to establish yourself as an expert in your
field. In turn, this helps to build trust amongst potential customers.
But how do you find
new, relevant questions to answer?
Just set up a Google Alert for something like [topic] + site:[forumname.com] + intitle:(who|what|when|where|how)
You will then be
alerted to new forum threads about your chosen topic. Jump in and answer any
questions that make sense for your business.
If you know of a bunch of relevant industry-specific forums, you can even add them all at once, like so: [topic] + site:[forumname.com] OR site:[forumname.com] OR site:[forumname.com] OR intitle:(who|what|when|where|how)
That way, Google will
alert you to any relevant results across many forums.
Don’t know of any forums in your niche? Just use quora.com.
SIDENOTE.
Quora does have an internal
notifications system which can alert you to “Questions Quora Thinks You Can
Answer” and “Questions People Want You to Answer.” However, these notifications
rely on Quora’s algorithm deeming you worthy. By using Google Alerts, you will
gain greater control over the alerts you do and don’t receive.
Oh, and if you can, do link to relevant content on your site when answering questions—relevance being the key word there. This will result in a constant stream of targeted referral traffic to your site, especially if the thread ends up ranking in Google.
7. Keep an eye on what your competitors are publishing
Most businesses
publish new blog content on a regular basis, including your competitors.
Keeping an eye on what
the competition is putting out there can help you to discover new topic ideas for your blog.
It also keeps you in the know, should they publish competing content.
RSS can help with
this. But let’s be honest, RSS feeds are limited and also ugly.
Using Google Alerts,
then, is a much better option.
Here’s a simple Google Alert to keep us informed about new posts from moz.com:
If we wanted to track new posts on multiple competing blogs—e.g., moz.com/blog AND buzzstream.com/blog—we can do that too.
Want to keep an eye on only specific topics? Just add one to your footprint.
8. Keep an eye on indexation errors
Google will sometimes
index undesirable pages from your site, such as those with URL parameters.
This is a big issue for ecommerce sites in particular.
Google Alerts can tell
you when undesirable pages like these are indexed.
To do this, you’ll
first need to identify a common URL footprint for any undesirable
pages.
This is something
you’ll have to do yourself, as it varies between sites.
For asos.com,
the presence of both “cid” and “page” in the URL would be a relevant
footprint. Any URLs containing both of these words are paginated pages, which
shouldn’t be indexed.
Here’s what the Google Alert would look like:
Setting up alerts like
this will allow you to nip indexing errors in the bud before they become a big
problem.
You could also do this
for specific file types. Let’s say that you don’t want Google to index PDFs
from your site, you could use the filetype: operator in your footprint,
like so:
9. Monitor for theft of your digital products
Do you sell digital
products — courses, ebooks, training materials, etc.?
I’ll hazard a guess
that battling with torrent sites (and other illegal download providers) is all
part and parcel of doing business, right?
We feel your pain.
Since Tim launched his blogging for business course earlier this
year, it’s been an issue for us too.
Here’s just one unwanted download source we spotted a few weeks ago:
Check the page now,
though, and you’ll see this:
Keeping an eye on our
brand mentions allowed us to detect this reasonably quickly and tackle the
issue accordingly.
Google Alerts can help
by keeping you informed about any unwanted download pages that enter the index.
Just use this footprint: [brand]
+ "product name" + (download|torrent) -site:yourdomain.com
You can then take action quickly.
Is Google Alerts really enough?
Google Alerts does
have its limitations—plenty of them.
But the most
significant limitation has to be the lack of data.
It’s true. Despite
having an insane amount of data at their fingertips, they neglect to report
on a lot of mentions.
Want proof? You’re in
luck. I ran a small experiment over the past seven days.
Here’s what
I did:
1.
Set up daily Google
Alerts for ten popular terms;
2.
Did the same in Ahrefs Alerts—our alerts monitoring tool.
Each day, I scraped
every single one of the alerts kicked back by each tool and saved them to a
spreadsheet. At the end of the seven days, I deduped each spreadsheet and
compared the numbers.
Here are
the stats:
Term |
Google Alerts |
Ahrefs Alerts |
litecoin |
418 |
5,849 🏆 |
north korea |
136 |
11,802 🏆 |
deadpool |
253 |
1,953 🏆 |
coca cola |
326 |
602 🏆 |
fidget spinner |
157 |
409 🏆 |
cryptocurrency |
470 |
35,863 🏆 |
pizza |
499 |
10,603 🏆 |
keyboard cat |
5 🏆 |
3 |
macbook pro |
249 |
2,419 🏆 |
peter falk |
13 🏆 |
9 |
SIDENOTE.
I made sure to use comparable settings
in both tools. For example, I set the language for all alerts to English.
Key takeaway: Ahrefs Alerts found 2,376% more
results, on average.
Why the HUGE difference?
An important distinction is that Ahrefs Alerts are entirely unfiltered. We
show you every matching mention that we find.
Google Alerts, on the
other hand, clearly pre-processes the results in some way.
Their crawler is
the most active on the web, so they almost
certainly find more mentions than us behind the scenes. They just choose not to
show all of these mentions via their alerts service.
Here’s another
critical point:
In our test, we found
that the majority of results from Ahrefs Alerts weren’t picked up by Google
Alerts, and vice-versa. If you want to catch everything (well, as much as
possible), we recommend that you set up the same alerts using both services.
PRO
TIP
Unlike Google Alerts, Ahrefs Alerts can do
more than find new mentions of keywords or phrases across the web. We also have
these two other types of alerts:
1.
Backlink alerts;
2.
New keyword alerts
Backlink alerts track both new and lost backlinks for any URL, domain, or prefix (e.g., ahrefs.com/blog/*)…
whereas the new keywords alert tells you when we see your site ranking for any new keywords.
Not only does this alert list all the new
keywords for which we see your site ranking, but it also tells you the search
volume and current ranking position for each keyword.
Want to learn more? Check out our video:
NOTE. Who knows? Perhaps, at some point, Google will
add similar types of alerts to Google Search Console. Doing so would make
sense, as all the data is there already. But GSC only works for your
website. With Ahrefs, you can set up alerts for competitors too.
But before I wrap this
thing up, there’s one BIG downside to both Google Alerts and Ahrefs
Alerts that you should remember:
They only tell you about
future mentions, not past mentions!
If you’re getting
regular alerts for a query, you can bet your bottom dollar that there are
already thousands of instances of it on the web.
To find these past
mentions, use Ahrefs Content Explorer.
Content Explorer > enter a search query
Mentions for “ahrefs” on the web (excluding
results from ahrefs.com) via Ahrefs Content Explorer
I don’t know about
you, but I think it would take a while to find 17K+ results with Google
Alerts!
Content Explorer also
lets you use many of the same search operators as in Ahrefs Alerts to refine
your results. Here, I’ve excluded results from ahrefs.com.
And there are a ton of
inbuilt filters too, which allow you to manipulate the results even further.
To illustrate, let’s view only English results that live on sites with a Domain Rating (DR) of 30+.
Doing that more than
halved the number of results from 17,083 to 7,394!
Want to learn more about Content Explorer? Watch this video:
Final Thoughts
Google Alerts is a
powerful tool that doesn’t cost a penny. You can use it for a whole lot
more than I’ve covered in this article too, so do play around with it and get
creative.
Do you use Google
Alerts? Let me know how you’re using it in the comments!