How and Why to Use Google Alerts

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Google Alerts Does the Research For You

There are tons of things to think about when you are building your blog, so what’s one more, right?  Well, don’t worry because I am going to tell you about an automated research tool provided by Google called Google Alerts. Whether or not you have heard of this little gem doesn’t matter if you aren’t using it.  If you are not using it now, then this should be one of the first things you do as soon as you can.

Google Alerts is an email alert system through the Google search engine.  This alert system sends you updates based on your keyword submissions.  For example, if you wanted to find out what’s going on with your favorite sports team, then you would enter the keywords associated with that team and once a day you’ll get alerted as to the latest news for that team.

Get Creative Using Google Alerts

Get creative with this tool as you can draw so much more information from it.  It works similar to an RSS (Really Simple Syndicate) feed in that you don’t have to go searching for the information…it comes right to your inbox.  You can find information on industry trends, monitor developing stories or even run vanity updates to check who’s been talking about you or your business.

The possibilities are endless. I use the Google Alerts for industry updates to help keep my mind full of fresh ideas for posting relevant articles (read my post on “How to build a blog” to see how much relevancy plays a part in google searches).

Here are a couple topics I use Google Alerts for:

1. Empower Network – this turns out results of the latest posts by other members so I can read their posts and learn tips from them about what they are doing and also create a dialog with them.  Most everyone in the Empower Network is pretty excited and super easy to talk with, so I’ve found this community to be a great place to grow my network.
2. I want to work from home – this is right up my alley since, not only do I work from home, but my customers are future full or part-time home based business owners themselves.  I learn a lot like this alert about How to Work From Home Like You Mean It.  I wrote a comment agreeing with their topic and now I am rewarding their good article with a backlink from my site, but it gave me some content to reward you with as well so it’s a win-win.
3. Find a Home-Based Business – This is also perfect because it includes some of my keyword phrases.  Here’s an example of a great informational article to help me with my research as it talks about how home-based businesses are the new life blood of the ailing economy.  Through this article I learned about new home business opportunities and I also learned about IBWire which is a  global market leader in online press release distribution.  That’s not a bad thing to know about in the internet marketing business, right?

As you can see, you can get pretty creative and the best part is, you won’t waste tons of time doing the research because the emails are sent to you.  Another good point is that you are not bombarded with emails every time something new turns up because you control how often you want to receive the information.  You can also cancel the Google Alerts any time you choose.  

To use Google Alerts, sign into your google account.  Next, go to .  Complete the search query with whatever you want to get email updates on.  Select what kind of results you want whether its a news feed, blog feed, etc.  Then, select once a day for the alerts and choose “only the best results”.  Then simply enter the email you want the alerts sent to and you are done.  It’s really easy.

Do some keyword research, find some good keywords for the information you want to find out and then get signed up for your Google Alerts.

Have a great day and happy blogging!