To monitor what people are saying about me online I use Google Alerts and Google sends me an email whenever somebody writes “patrick altoft” on their web page.
Over the last few weeks Google has been sending loads of these emails, basically whenever somebody uses the phrase “SEO” on their page it sends me an alert to say somebody has written my name. You can imagine how many times that is.
Will this help my rankings I wonder?
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Very impressive Patrick, you’ve become synonymous with SEO!
That is really strange but Google Alerts are not very accurate as I have found in the past. I am always wondering how many mentions are missed by Google Alerts. e.g. try to set a google alert on some very common word – in theory you should be bombarded with emails but you are not.
When I just did a blog search for SEO, I saw your name twice. (No one else had more than one listing)
You would be getting thousands of alerts a day then wouldnt you?
Find me on Twitter
I don’t get too many, see Janusz comment above.
More comments from Patrick AltoftInteresting. I wonder if you have used the term SEO in your anchor tags a lot.
I am not sure how useful google alerts is for affiliate marketing or internet marketing. I suppose if you are doing keyword research, it may come in handy
Wow, I can think of quite a few people who would like to be in that position. But it’s also a sort of a Groundhog’s Day scenario… one might feel like Bill Murray stuck in this kind of rut.
Of course, you can change your setting so you’re only notified once a week, that at least will bother you less frequently.
“SEO” is preferable to what I ended up with. Someone with the same name as me (and living only 20 miles from me) recently went onto a Jerry Springer gameshow over here and confessed a string of drug & hooker fuelled orgies to his wife in a vain attempt to win £50k. As a result my name is splattered disaprovingly all over the media.
Could somebody explain to me, just how the Alert functions works (or is supposed to work?)
I use it a lot, but I don´t see any pattern – sometimes if finds really old articles, sometimes new ones, sometimes none at all…
I thought it might “think” an article to be new, when it first spiders it, but I get sent a lot of alerts of site that definately have been spidered a long time ago…
Who´s expert on Alert?
Find me on Twitter
I haven’t figured it out either.
More comments from Patrick AltoftNot quite related but search for David Bradley Player (#1) David Bradley Player (I’m #1) David Bradley Killer (#2) and the best…David Bradley Porn Star (#1)…oh and of course David Bradley Science Writer (#1)
Bummer, eh?
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I would say this would for sure help your rankings Patrick.
If you Google
“#1 seo writer on google”
Presently a post I made on the PeterJones.tv forums is in first place and this blog post is #2
Your “We are planning a post about #1 seo writer on google next week so” statement along with other factors will contribute to that of course.
It is as you say sometimes very interesting what Google “decides”
I work for a website and when I search for my name with inverted comma that web sites name come first at Google results.
Is their no way of regulating the web to stop abuse, it seems to be opne season in the hands of the wrong people?
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