What is Google Alerts?Google Alerts is a free monitoring functionality from Google which sends the users an email every time new content is published on the internet regarding the keywords set up.

Why Google Alerts?• The main value that Google Alerts gives for

business is the opportunity to monitor the internet live and get results of the latest contents published. It might help your company to locate new competitors, facts about the sector and local news that may affect your business.

• By setting up Google Alerts you will get the you need instantly, which gives your company an advantage within your competitors, letting you know statistics about your company (i.e. negative comments) and give a response ASAP which increases the chances to get it right.

How to use Google Alerts? • It is really easy Google Alerts. The user just has to

access Google Alerts and set up the search query, the kind of results you want to get (news, blogs, videos, etc) and how often you want to get the results. Also, you might have to set up an email account where you will receive the alerts.

How to choose the keywords?• There are lots of search terms which we will be

likely to be monitoring, but to choose the right ones will give us the chance to get the best results without a hundred of useless emails.

Some ideas• Company name: this one is mandatory. If your

name is formed of more than a word, it might be used

• Sector + Location: It will helps the company to locate different issues such as events, laws or anything regarding the sector, including new competitors (i.e social media, Birmingham)

• Competitors: See which content is being published about our competitors will help us to see good and bad practices.

Tips to choose the words• Don’t be so general regarding the search terms

otherwise you will receive lots of results which might become spammer.

• Select the right email frequency: Usually once a day is enough for searches with more than two results on average a day. For searches with less content frequency, setting it up just when content happens will be OK and won’t became spam.

How the results are shown?• Google Alerts will send you and email to the

chosen email address with a really simple format similar to the results on the search engine: Title, summary and link, with the keywords in bold.

• These emails are usually sent in the morning (between 8am and 10am) so set up an account that you will be able to access by this time (usually in your smartphone).