Saturday 15 June 2013

Alternatives for Google Alerts

If you want to know what online users have to say about you or your brand or even your products then you can use Google Alerts.
Have a look at the following screenshot:





Now look in the following screenshot as I have type "donate car" as a keyword in the search query box, you can see the website that have mentioned donate car have been displayed, that is so cool. You can search for anything that you are looking for.



Now we know that Google is continuously crawling the web. Google will send you an email alert the moment they find a news story or even if any web page that includes a mention of your name or brand. 


But problem with it is that the tool may not always work as advertised and also the other downside is that Google Alerts mostly ignores social media websites.


Following are some good alternatives to Google Alerts:



1) TalkWalker:
TalkWalker monitors your brand mentions on the social web or blogs and online discussion forums. TalkWalker also sends real-time email alerts and you can subscribe to the search results via RSS feeds as well. So that's why I like it more than Google Alerts.

2) Mention.net:
A freemium alerts service that helps you can track brand mentions on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums, video websites and the public web. Mention offers a simple wizard-style approach for setting up alerts and you may also filter alerts from certain websites. When you sign-up for Mention, it will prompt you to download an app /extension but you can safely skip that step as the website has all the required features.

3) Infoxicate:
Most alerting services require you to specify keywords (like “california oranges”) and they monitor web pages for those keywords. Here you can setup “pings” for news you have been waiting for and it will send alerts when that happens. For instance, you can receive an alert when an Indian startup is featured in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. Or when Matt Cutts publishes a new blog post. Or when a new book by your favorite author is released. Or when your favorite music band is performing.

4) Newsly:
Newsly isn’t exactly an email alerts service but it can help track your contacts and friends when they are featured in blogs, online newspapers and websites. Sign-in with your Facebook or LinkedIn account and it will alert you whenever your friends make the news. You may also use Newle as an ego-monitoring tool for tracking mentions of your name on the web.

So now you would be able to track your product's searches and conversations. And doing that will make you grow your business and you will earn more.