WHY? YOU SHOULD ACTIVATE Google Alerts FOR EVERYTHING

“For the things we have to learn, before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” ― Aristotle

Many are pretty familiar with the use of Google Alerts, but this tool is actually much more powerful than you think. For short, Google Alerts MONITOR THE WEB for interesting NEW CONTENT.

URL - https://www.google.com.ng/alerts ?

Here is a reference link that summarizes Google Alerts I find interesting -

https://seranking.com/blog/google-alerts-for-marketing/ ?

One of the out-of-the-box things you can use Google Alerts for, let's assume you are looking for job opportunities either local or foreign, most organizations across the world have UNIQUE KEYWORDS that appear in most published openings i.e. CV, RESUME, COVER LETTER, APPLICATION, JOB ROLE TITLE e.t.c.

Imagine setting up Google Alerts with the following keywords - A COVER LETTER CV OR RESUME TO YOUR APPLICATION AND ROLE TITLE, awesome idea right?

For clarity, this is just an illustrative example, not a comparison or replacement for powerful job websites like LinkedIn, etc.

Another thing, besides personal use, you may even think of creative services, if you are the type that gets triggered by innovative ideas, or let's say you are considering starting a global online media company, what tool can give you that edge on “BREAKING NEWS” keyword notifications worldwide?

Using another lens, digital trust has an important role in the growth of the technology industry, and with the rise of identity theft, misrepresentation, misinformation, or disinformation, you should keep track of things with tools that are effective, FREE, and also powerful like Google Alerts.

According to Yulia Deda’s post, I agree that you should create Alerts related to -

1. Your brand, products, services, publications, etc.

2. Mentions of your company’s competitors or even your political rivals, etc.

3. Mentions of your company’s representatives/executives, etc.

Another angle, in today’s modern world, social media companies have curbed negative behaviors by introducing job roles for content moderators, so even though Google Alerts might not be able to crawl social media websites, there are active algorithms and humans, that subject flagged posts or comments to rigorous scrutiny, but what happens to the rest of the open web?

Using another lens to view this, the predictable playbook of an average disgruntled human to spite others on the web today, among other things are - identity theft, negative reviews, misrepresentation, misinformation, disinformation, character assassination, etc., while on this quest, the loyalty of web crawlers stays true across all missions, irrespective of the objective, continuous discovery of new pages and links on the web.

Part of the loyal qualities of the bots on every mission among others -

1. Ability to remember things when asked, meaning they have to store content and connections between pages.

2. Ability to answer questions effectively when asked, meaning they have to analyze and organize content and connections between pages.

3. Ability to stay true to all promises, provided you agree to a pinky swear, on what you want as specified on the Google Alerts system when activated.

As known by most, pinky swear is a traditional gesture most commonly practiced amongst children involving the locking of the pinkies of two. The bots commit to this pledge of allegiance by notifying you once there is new content on the specified keyword, phrase, etc.

Even if contents were later deleted after an alert notification, the internet archiving platform “Wayback Machine” has always been a reliable redundancy, and trusted friend for content recovery and referencing.

The objective of the Wayback Machine is to capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Only available for sites that allow crawlers.

"I realized that becoming a master of karate was not about learning 4,000 moves but about doing just a handful of moves 4,000 times."? — Chet Holmes

How do I create Google Alerts?

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/4815696?hl=en ?

So, what are your thoughts? Are there other innovative use cases for Google Alerts you can think of?

I hope this was informative and useful for all those that sent reminders about #BizFest22 , “Best wishes to you” - May bots and crawlers visit you in numbers often, with or without pinky swears.

Thank you.

#BizFest22 #GoogleAlerts