Want to be “in the know” about what is being published online about your small business? Whether you want to keep track of the success of your online PR efforts or if you’d like to be aware if customers or employees are “talking” about your company on the Internet, the free Google Alerts tool can be a valuable resource for you.

What Are Google Alerts

With the Google Alerts tool, you can receive an email notification any time your company name – or any phrases that you choose – are published online and show up in a top 50 search result in Google. Instead of wondering if your press releases have been published online, or pondering what people might be saying about your organization in their blogs, you’ll be notified of such developments via email if you use this free online resource.

Setting Up an Alert

Signing up to receive Google alerts is very simple. All you need to do is visit Google.com/alerts and use the “Create a Google Alert” form for each phrase that you’d like to receive notifications about. Enter the phrase you want to track into the “search terms” entry box, then specify the type of alert you want to receive, notification frequency, and email address where the information should be sent.

Note that it’s necessary to place the phrase you want to receive alerts about in quotation marks. This lets the tool know that you want results for the entire phrase, not for each individual word within the phrase.

You can create several different Google Alerts, allowing you to keep track of online publication of a wide variety of phrases of interest to you. It makes sense to create alerts for your own company name, the names of your primary competitors, your name and the names of your business partners or key members of your team, and key phrases that your target consumers are likely to be searching for online.

What to Expect

Once you have set up Google Alerts for each phrase you’re interested in keeping up with, you won’t have to take any further action. When something publishes online about one of your alert phrases, you’ll receive an email alerting you of that fact. The email will include a link to the site where the phrase is published on the Internet, making it easy for you to click through and read exactly what was published. What you do with the information, of course, is up to you!