Every business needs to protect its online reputation. Unfortunately, they don’t usually address problems that could affect their brand image, because they don’t even know about them. You will need to monitor what things people are saying about your online. One of the easiest tools is Google Alerts. This is a great free tool, but it isn’t always enough to know about any reputational problems that you may face. Here are some things that you should consider before using it.
Understand How Google Alerts Work
Google Alerts is a notification tool that people can use to keep track of new content that is published on the Internet. You can subscribe to Google Alerts for different key terms and Google will email you when related content is published.
Using Google Alerts is very straightforward. You need to login to your Google Alerts account and specify what keywords you want to track. You will have to also state which email you want the alerts sent to.
Should You Use Google Alerts to Monitor Your Reputation?
Google Alerts is a great tool if you want to track and save your online reputation. Here are some tips that you will need to follow:
- Compile a list of keywords related to your company. Make sure that the list is as comprehensive as possible. It should have your company name, acronym and your own name.
- Set the profile to make your results as broad as possible. Don’t limit notifications to news stories, because blog posts and forum threads can have a number of statements that can impact your reputation as well. Make sure that the list include “all results” rather than the most recent. A small blog may make a very brief reference to you or your company, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t be viewed by many people who may want to research more about you.
- Try to create as many updates as possible.
- Think carefully when setting the frequency that you want to be emailed. Information can travel very quickly and you will want to address some problems right away. It may be good to get updates as soon as Google crawls a new post rather than being notified once a day.
Google Alerts is a great tool if you use it for a number of broad searches. You can be notified of any posts that could affect your reputation so that you can take action right away.
Understand the Limitations
Google Alerts is one of the best free tools for monitoring your reputation, but it may not be enough on your own. Here are some limitations that you need to be aware of:
- Some blogs may be banned by Google. This means that they are no longer crawled and you won’t receive updates.
- Google Alerts doesn’t usually ping you about posts that are made on social networking sites. Twitter posts are usually very brief and don’t get much attention with Google. Some social networking sites and communities are not crawled by search engines so Google Alerts won’t help you.
- Some website owners have different settings in their Google Webmaster Tools regarding how often they want Google to crawl them. This means that you may not be updated about something that is posted there for a couple weeks after the fact. Google itself may decide to crawl a site less frequently so it isn’t always the best tool for real-time results.
You can try using Google Alerts if you want an online reputation management tool that is free and easy, but there are times when you need something else.
About the author: Kalen is an IT professional and branding consultant. He understands the importance of online reputation management and encourages people to use the best tools on the market to protect themselves.
