How To Monitor What Is Being Said About You Online

I recently wrote about how you can find out when someone searches Google for your name. If you are interested in who is looking for you and your general online reputation, you are probably equally interested in finding out what is being said about you online.

People could be spreading information about you or your business that you should rather be aware of. Rather than to regularly scan the search engines for results with your name, you can automate the process of monitoring your online reputation and be notified once there is a new entry containing your name. This will also work for any other subject that is of interest to you.

In this article I will introduce three services that allow you to monitor your online reputation and set up alerts for specific topics.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts provides updates of the latest Google results relevant to your search query across Google (comprehensive) or within different categories, such as news or blogs. You can choose to receive updates as-it-happens, once a day or once a week. They are subsequently delivered to your email or you can set up a personalized feed.

To receive email updates you do not have to sign up with Google. However, as a subscribed member you can centrally manage all your alerts about your online reputation.

As you can see from the example above, I have used some standard search engine operands. You can use these signs and keys to get more specific search results. So for example “Keane AND Berlin” will only return results from indexed sites that contain both keywords. A while ago I wrote an article on Google operands, which may come in handy now.

Trackle

Trackle is a service dedicated to tracking your personalized information online. To receive updates, you must sign up with your email address and password. It’s quick and simple. Once you’re in, Trackle offers many more features than Google Alerts. First of all, you can receive updates via the web portal, email, SMS, or through your feed reader.

The biggest difference between Trackle and Google Alerts is that Trackle has a lot more entertainment value. They have prepared search queries, known as Tracklets, and made them available through their Tracklet catalog. The categories include books, health, people, and travel. You can browse the catalog and add any of the Tracklets to your subscriptions.

To set up a custom search, type in your query into the text field in the top right that says “Research company, person, product, or topic“. It will direct you to a page with results from the past three days, like the one shown in the screenshot below.

From that page you can further select the types of results you’re after, for example narrow your results by credibility, select categories, and discover other users with similar interests.

Once happy with your definitions, click “Track this search” to enter the next step in which you define how the results are delivered to you. The search can be run every hour, every 4 or 8 hours, and once a day. Moreover, your search will not be executed forever, you can select a duration of up to four weeks.

Your inbox shows the latest alerts and within your subscriptions you can see what you’re tracking and eventually update it.

Other interesting features of Trackle include a widget for your website or blog or the option to create a custom newsletter.

Social Mention

Another way to receive a quick overview of your popularity or impact in the social media world is Social Mention. You can search blogs, bookmarks, comments, videos, a lot more or simply everything.

The results page provides a detailed analysis of the query. If the coverage is too broad, you can narrow down your search by specifying details in the advanced search.

The data can be downloaded as a CSV/Excel sheet and you can subscribe to alerts via email or RSS feed.

If you found this information helpful for managing your online reputation, you may also be interested in the following articles from Saikat:

10 Uses of Google Alerts For A Freelancer
Topikality – Improve Google Alerts & Get The Articles You Want

How do you keep up to date with what’s being published online?

Image credits: buzzybee