© 2004, John Calder http://www.TheEzine.net

Do a search on Google today, and you may see an offer to "...Get the latest web results on (your search) emailed to you with Google Web Alerts." Marketers should be quick to realize this can be a useful way to monitor your own business, your competitors, your markets, and search results for your keywords.

You can set up a Google alert to monitor the top 10 Google News stories, the top 20 Google web search results, or both. Enter a search term, tell Google the type of alert you want, how often you want Google to check for alerts, & your email address. After you confirm your alert by email, you're all set.

Just think - you can use a Google web search alert to monitor search results for your highest-ranking pages, your best-paying keywords, and new markets you're thinking about entering. By signing up for alerts of volatile keywords, you can get a good idea of when a Google dance is occurring. And of course, you can monitor the ranking of your own and competitors' business pages as well.

With a Google News alert, you will be able to monitor client news if you're involved in design or SEO work and industry news around your niche sites. One really nice aspect of the alerts service is that you can use Google's advanced search capabilities to create your alert. Just go to Google's advanced search page, select your search parameters, and search. From your results page, click on the link at the bottom to start creating your alert.

And to sweeten the deal, Google Alerts are free!

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