Ravi’s Rants

Quite frequently, I am reminded of how we take certain things for granted, while it could be something completely new/interesting/educating/shocking for someone else.

Using Google Alerts for competitive research is one such “thing”. During a chat with a friend the other day, I casually mentioned how I use Google Alerts to keep an eye on my industry, and it completely blew him away, while I’d actually been doing this for as long as Google Alerts have existed (and before that News.com alerts).

So, for what it’s worth, here goes:

I use Google Alerts to set up specific alerts for specific keywords.

When Google first finds any new or existing content (blog posts, web pages, forum discussions, etc) anywhere on the web that it hasn’t indexed before, that contains these keywords, Google sends me an email with a link to this newly-found content.

And if a publisher has password-protected their content, but still allowed Google to index it (using the “password-protected content” sitemaps feature), then Google emails me a little blurb of that password-protected content!

So, basically I have set up tens of alerts, the first one (vanity “alert” ahead - quite literally! being my own name (”Ravi Jayagopal”). That way, I always know the instant (or within a few days at worst), if anyone is blogging/writing about me or my products.

Here are some of the alerts you could create:
1. Your full name
2. For all your product names
3. All your web site urls
4. Each and every one of your competitors’ names
5. All of your partners’ names
6. Name of any industry expert (or their web site url) whose blog/site you follow (like I have one for “Seth Godin”
7. The name or category of your industry: For eg., right now I’m a month away from launching a very powerful “Access Management” software to manage subscription-based web sites. So, some of my alerts include the keywords “subscription”, “content”, “download”, “security”, etc. Yes, I do get some false positives, but who cares!

The kind of stuff Google finds on a daily basis thanks to these alerts, not only help me keep a tab on myself, my customers, my competitors, and my idols, but it also gives me a lot of new ideas, new features for my products, and great new ways in which I can make my product remarkable!

So go create your alerts today.

In my book “No Business Like E-Business“, I write about the Google Supplemental Index (GSI - Ravi’s acronym). Basically, this is like the “alternate” Google database, where sites that are “on the way in” or “on the way out” show up.

If yours is a new site, it may show up in the GSI before it shows up in Google’s main index (google.com). Similarly, if your site has suddenly disappeared from the main index, you may find it here (before it disappears from everywhere on Google - which means your site probably violated their webmaster guidelines, and has gotten banned by the Almight G!).

Here’s more information from Google Webmaster Central about the Supplemental Index.

And don’t forget to subscribe to the feed while you’re there.

You know what is Blog-And-Ping. Blog-And-Bookmark is quite similar.

You first blog about something (hopefully) interesting, then once your blog’s ping service has done its work on the back-end pinging all of the various web sites and your post is live, then you go to work as follows.

Use a one-to-many social bookmarking tool like AddMe.com or Socializer. I use AddMe on my blog itself, but use Socializer when I am actively bookmarking my own posts. Also check out the one-form-many-bookmarks site OnlyWire.com.

Add a bookmark to your post at all leading sites starting with StumbleUpon.com, Digg.com, Reddit.com and Netscape.com. You should do it manually for these sites, and use OnlyWire.com for automated submission to the rest of the sites.

I highlight StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit and Netscape here, because those are the ones that send about 95% of the social bookmarking traffic that my blog gets. The rest of them add up to only about 5%, but pursuing them is still worth it due to the number of back-links (incoming links) you will get.

See the Feedburner statistics (screenshot) below for RavisRants.com.

Note the spike in traffic every time I do blog-and-bookmark myself. It not only brings in a fresh supply of visitors, but also increases my number of average subscribers (Feedburner only reports that number for one given day, as the number can vary from day to day). This is not only a great way to get first time visitors, but also to get some new feed subscribers.

So, don’t forget to blog-and-ping, tag-and-ping, and blog-and-bookmark every single time you post.

Google’s Blogsearch and Technorati are great sites for focused reading about a particular subject.

Doing a Google search is entirely different from doing a search on blog search. Google’s Blogsearch and Technorati will both bring you back all posts on blogs and niche sites that have been tagged with, or contain, the keyword that you are searching for.

So, if I wanted to know what’s new about Adsense, I wouldn’t do a Google search, but a Blogsearch for the word ‘Adsense’, or a Technorati blog search, or even a Technorati tag search - so I’ll know what’s the latest and greatest, and who’s saying what in reference to Adsense.

On the flip side, as a blogger, to automatically ping Google’s blogsearch every time you “post” to your blog, add this URL to your blog’s ping list.

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

To ping blogsearch manually, go here.
To ping Technorati manually, go here.

- Ravi Jayagopal / LinkOverLoad.com

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