During a lunchtime lecture at last week’s conference, a presenter mentioned the importance of setting up a Google Alert for your name so you’ll know what people are saying about you and when your articles get published.
Frankly, if I set up a Google Alert for “Susan Johnston,” the number of emails would be completely unmanageable. Granted, you can set weekly or monthly updates, but when you have a generic name, there are bound to be several Googlegangers (others who share your name and show up in searches) and sorting through them is a huge PITA.
Still, I’d like to know when my articles are getting published without having to check a website ten times a day (er, not that I would actually do that). So, I came up with a better way to monitor my bylines: setting up alerts to search specific websites. That way I’ll automatically get an email when my article gets published but I won’t have to sort through the other stuff.
Here’s how to do it: Go to Google.com/alerts and create an alert for “Your name” Site:website.com. For instance, I could set up an alert for Experience.com by typing “Susan Johnston” site:Experience.com. Then, once I find a new article I’ve written, I bookmark it in Delicious for future reference.
I also set up an alert for “urban muse” so I can see when people mention my blog or link to me. What strategies do you use? Any suggestions that might work even better?
Monday, October 27, 2008
Tip for Tracking Your Writing Online
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13 comments:
I haven't tried it yet but there is a relatively new service on the web called Yotify. It's been described as Google alerts on steroids and can be found at http://www.yotify.com/ . It will aggregate all your alerts together in one place if it does work out for you.
@Mark: thanks for the tip! I have a friend who's trying to buy a certain wedding dress online at a discount, so this would be perfect for her!
Thanks for the tips, Susan! I'll have to give this a try. My last name is not that common, so I could possibly just go with it. I think I've only seen one other "Kristen Tribe" online.
I did some more checking on this subject for my own benefit. I found a trialware software program (requires Windows OS) called "WebSite-Watcher" that is supposed to be far and away the #1 software for this task. The web site is located at http://www.aignes.com/index.htm . There is also a web based checker called WatchThatPage (http://www.watchthatpage.com/) which may do the trick for you for free.
@Susan: That is fantastic. I never thought to do that. I just set up a few alerts for my name and also my blog. Care to share any other ways of keeping track if you or your blog is mentioned? I might have to pick your brain a little about this.
@Sal: I also use Statcounter to track incoming links and traffic stats, but that only works if someone finds your site by clicking. If you use you WordPress, it will tell you who is linking to you, too. Mark has some good ideas, too.
@Susan: I just found out that putting the "" marks around the words allows google alerts to only alert you to that full phrase. Not sure if you knew that or not, but I just tried it and it worked.
@Sal: I should have explained that when I gave instructions on setting up an alert! The quotes around "Susan Johnston" and "urban muse" were so that the search results only returned that exact phrase, like you said. Another trick is to use AND (all caps) to find search results with several of the same words or phrases.
@Susan: Sweet, I will have to give that a try as well. Thanks again for setting a "beginner" straight!
I just came across a blog post today by accident titled "Is Your Reputation on the Line?". This post which is dated 10/23/08 has an impressive list of search engines and alerts that will track your Internet activities. Some of these search engines and alerts may be useful for tracking your writing online. The URL is http://www.jobsearchdebugged.com/blog/?p=160 . I think there used to be something called privacy but I don't think you'll find it online!
@Mark: Haha, I think anyone who blogs under their real name understands the lack of privacy online (or at least, I hope they do).
Great idea, thanks. I hadn't put any thought into this yet, but it would be interesting to know when/if we get mentioned in the oh-so-not-private-virtual-world.
Great tip. I already have a google alert set up for my blog and it's come in handy.
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