Useful tool... Google Alerts

I was just thinking that I haven't posted recently to my blog. And there it is, all shiny and looking bored... So...

I got this tip from a presentation at Podcamp Philly last month. Google Alerts is a great way to keep your eye on a technology, tool, well, any search term you can dream up. The service will send you a message every time a new blog post or web page appears with your search terms on it.

Accessing Google Alerts is simple. First, sign up for a Google mail account. Then, go to www.google.com/alerts and configure a search term. Here is my current set:

The types of alerts available include:

• News - News articles (news.google.com) that appear with your search term.


• Web - Any new web pages indexed with your search term


• Blog - Any blogs that reference your site in new posts


• Comprehensive - A mix of News, Blogs, and Web Sites.

You have lots of configuration options available to you. For example, you can set the alerts to be checked once per day, per week, or as they happen. Also, you can configure emails for HTML or straight text, and for each alert you can email it to a different destination.

Use Alerts to track stories of interest (for example, I am currently tracking the SpringSource licensing changes and interest in my podcast, and Grails). As a business you can use it to track your competitors, and what others are saying about you as well.

Alerts is a great and free tool. Check it out today and let me know if it helps you in any way, I'm curious how useful it is to others.