Web tracking: Google Alerts
Third tool in my web tracking kit? Google Alerts.
You can set Google Alerts to receive email notifications for results from web search, blog search, Google News, Google Groups and even Google Video, as well as a comprehensive alert that combines the results from three search engines (web, news, blogs).
This is a very useful tool to know what even your company intranet doesn’t tell you. I actually found out my ex-company’s deal with a Korean electronic powerhouse ahead of my bosses this way.
Setting alerts as-it-happens is useful if you want to monitor a specific event. especially when you have an issue or crisis at hand. However, if you fight a ton of emails on a daily basis, you may prefer to have your alerts emailed to you in a daily or weekly summary.
With Google as God of the Internet, this tool is possibly the best you can have for a bird’s eye view of your pet topic.
Web tracking: Alexa
For those who have yet to create their arsenal of web tracking tools, this post will get you started.
Let’s start with Alexa.com. Alexa has a vast database of information about sites that includes statistics, related links and more. To access information about a website, including a site overview, traffic details and related links – simply type the URL of any site into the Alexa Search box. You can also compare a website’s traffic against that of its competitors like I’ve done with Google, Yahoo and MSN below.
Also check out the Global Top 500 sites and the Country Top 100 sites to know the most popular websites in the world and also in your target market. This will help you identify which websites you should invest your dollars and efforts in.
The Digital Vibes 