Want a FREE Research Assistant?

July 18, 2009 2:36 pm admin Business Strategies, Free Business Tools, Online Business

Every minute of my day is scheduled to the enth degree and frankly I just don’t have the time to be searching the web – so I thought you might like to know one of the free online tools I cottoned onto to do this job for me. It’s called Google Alerts. Now you may or may not know about the service but personally I find it a fabulous time saving option to keep on top of topics that are of interest to me. So if you are not using it you might like to follow my lead.

Google Alerts are email updates that are automatically dumped into your email tray based on your choice of topic. I select to receive mine once a day but when you sign up for the service there are various options available to you in regards to the frequency you wish to receive your alerts. The results I receive are based on the topics I wish to monitor and are extracted from the latest relevant Google results, web, news, etc.

Each day when my alert list arrives I quickly scan it, action anything I need to immediately and then dump the alert list into a folder. Then once a week I read through the list and job done, I am up to speed on what is happening across the globe in my areas of interest. Some great ideas that you could use the service for are to keep updated on news stories affecting your industry, keeping tabs on your competitors, anything said or picked up by google about your own business or ideas and trends relating to your career or business. I have over 30 topics that I’ve selected to be alerted to and some of those I delete and change regularly depending on what I’m working on at the time.

So to clarify, if for example you selected ‘Your Business Name’ as one of your topics – anything Google picks up in regards to your business would appear in the Google Alert list you receive each day, along with info on all the other topics you have asked to be alerted about. So your list could have 2 or 3 items listed or it could have 30 items listed, it just depends on the topics you have selected to be alerted about.

So I ask you, why would anyone spend time surfing the net for hours when you can use Google Alerts to do the work for you? It’s like having your own PA who works 24 hours gathering the research that you require and giving you the refined list each day.

Lynette Palmen AM, Founder and Managing Director, Women’s Network Australia – The leading network for women in business across Australia offering business information, issues, trends and ideas. Visit www.womensnetwork.com.au

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Contributed by Lynette Palmen.   Lynette Palmen AM is the Founder and Managing Director or Women's Network Australia. She started WNA 20 years ago to offer support, inspiration and services that would inspire women to succeed in their career and business endeavours. WNA is now the Nation's premier networking organisation for business and professional women. T: 1800 052 476.

Lynette Palmen has written 43 article(s) for us.

Visit http://womensnetwork.com.au

  • Lynette, I had never used Google Alerts and tried it after reading your Blog. fantastic tool, thanks so much!
  • How fabulous. Employed google alert immediately. Many thanks.
  • Thankyou so much Lynette for this absolutely wonderful tip. I'll defintely be having a look into this.
  • Sounds good. I'll give it a go. Thank you for that.
  • My website is a collection of resources for training professionals so I used to spend hours each week trawling the net for good articles, blogs, etc., that is, until I discovered the magical tool that is Google Alerts! I have set up alerts for all the keywords I normally search on, including my name and my business name. I have over 40 alerts set up so I find the best way to deal with the alert emails is to have a rule set up in Outlook. That way, when the alert emails come into my mailbox, they go directly to my "alerts" folder and they stay there until I have my research time. It's quite exciting to open that folder each week and see what my lovely research assistant has found for me! If anyone would like to know how to set up the rule in Outlook, please contact me via my website and I'll send you some instructions.
  • Lynette you are a woman after my own heart. i love Google Alerts and am always surprised when I mention it how few people know about it, or are using it. It is the best free on-line tool I have found and allows you to find out what is being said about you without any effort. You're mad if you don't! B
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