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Would you like to know when someone is talking about you on the Internet? If you answered yes to this question, then Guru Frog has some good news for you! A fantastic free service from Google, called Google Alerts, will let you know when someone’s talking about you!

Google Alerts is a service that allows you to track keywords or key phrases and receive an email when said keywords or phrases are mentioned on the Internet. If you’ve launched a new blog and want to know if anyone on the Internet is talking about it, Google Alerts can assist you here.

Let’s go through the steps of setting up a Google Alert:

• You will need to create a Google Mail (Gmail) account.
• Visit in your favorite browser
• Complete the form that appears on the screen
• Search Query: This is the keyword or key phrase that you want to track. I might like to put “Guru Frog” in the search query to find out who is talking about me on the Internet.
• Result Type: Here you have the choice of results you are interested in, I like to use “Everything”, but you’re welcome to refine your choice.
• How Often: The three options here allow you to decide how often you want to receive emails.
• How Many: This is an important option, if you are tracking a keyword or keyphrase that is very common, you may want to choose “Only the best results”, if your keyword or key phrase is less generic or very specific you can go for the “All results” option.
• Deliver to: This should be auto-selected to your Google Mail (GMail) account.
• Click to create alert button

That’s it! Depending on the options you selected, you will start receiving emails every time your keyword or key phrase is mentioned on the Internet.

Bonus: Google Alerts via RSS

If you prefer a clean inbox, then perhaps you’d prefer to receive your Google Alerts via RSS instead of email? In the Deliver to option, you’ll see “Feed” option, if you select this before clicking the create alert button, you’ll be given an RSS Feed link that you can put into your favourite RSS Reader and enjoy receiving updates via RSS instead of email.

Remember, you can update your alerts at any point by visiting , so if you make a mistake, don’t panic!

As a new blogger, it’s often useful and exciting to know whether someone is talking about your blog, this gives you a chance to be there first to leave a comment or engage with that person – ok, so it’s not really about SEO at the end of the day, but this definitely falls under the topic of inbound marketing, which SEO lends itself to.

Froggy Disclaimer: I’m the SEO frog, I had to mention SEO, give me a break!

So go ahead, create an alert and look forward to being the first to know when someone’s talking about you!