Google Alerts - How to use it

If you're not using this, it's worth giving it a try. The purpose for this is to have notification when new links to your site are found by Google. This can be very good for any linkbuilding campaign.

http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en&gl=

<edit> I almost forgot. You can set it for Blogs, news, web, etc.

The search term should be: link:http://www.example.com

You can set the frequency to as soon as it happens, once per day, or once per week.

It's very handy for watching progress of Google picking up new links to your sites.

More:

What is the maximum number of alerts I can create?

You can create up to 1000 alerts. To create more alerts, you can either delete any existing alerts or request alerts to be sent to a different email address. Please remember that you can only have up to 10 unverified Alerts at any given time.

 

Hey, nice tip, dude!

I will have a try of that. I am a stats freak, so this should be another bit of info to check feverishly every day

 

That's a great idea - I think I'll try that out. Thanks!

 

nice! I just signed up for it. thanks.

 

Thanks. Rep added.

 

It's a great way of seeing progress, especially since we can only see 1000 backlinks via the link: option for the various search engines.

 

Excellent advice (y)

 

Do we include the link part before url too?

The search term should be: link:http://www.example.com

 

Do you leave the type on comprehensive?

 

This is a fantastic resource!!! Thank you so much. My readers will really enjoy this!

 

Awesome thanks for the info!

 

Yes.

It should read:

link:http://www.example.com

Code (markup):

 

thanks man, much appreciated

 

Thanks very much usasportstraining, setting it up now, and thanks for the tip, very helpful.

 

It is a little quirky.

You may want to try other ways such as:

link: [url]http://www.example.com[/url]    <--- notice the space between link: and http?

link:[url]www.example.com[/url]

link:[url]http://example.com[/url]

Code (markup):

etc.

You'll notice differences when using variations via Google search, so I expect that there may be differences with Google Alerts as well.

 

I'm trying it at a secondary email address with the space between "link:" and the url and at my main email address with no space.

It will be nice to get some good news once in a while!

 

Thanks usasportstraining, ive setup each variation.

 

Great! Thanks for your sharing.

 

Thanks for sharing with other DP member.

I just curios that I saw Yahoo Alerts as well.

Can we use Yahoo Alerts the same way as the method used in Google Alerts?

Or is there another way to track links development using Yahoo search engine?

 

Yahoo have alerts too, cool, will have to take a look.