When print was king, companies would hire press clipping services to track what was being written about them in newspapers and magazines. As a down-home example, imagine that you submit a press release to all the newspapers and magazines within 50 miles of your business. Unless you subscribe to and read each and every one of those publications, you would never know which publications ran the release. One option would be to hire a press clipping service to track that for you.
While press clipping services still exist, you can track online coverage yourself. And now it’s free.
What is Google Alerts
Google offers a service called Google Alerts, which will email updates of relevant Google results based on your choice of topic. You choose a word or subject matter and Google automatically notifies you when new content from news, web, blogs, video and/or discussion groups matches your search terms.
For example, I have Google Alerts set up for my company, Trevellyan.biz, and my name, Suzanne Trevellyan. Whenever either of these are indexed through Google’s search engine, I am notified. If a newspaper runs a story with my name in it, I am notified. If it appears on a blog, I’m notified. Even if someone adds me to their website’s list of contacts, I’m notified.
Google Alerts is a low-cost way to monitor your company’s online presence. If you’d like help setting up a Google Alert, give us a call at 518.392.0846 or email [email protected].