Free Website Content
Tools for Online Tracking
In order to determine which advertising
and marketing efforts are effective you must have ways
to measure the results of those efforts. Alerts and
instant notifications can be instrumental in monitoring
search engine position, trademarked terms, monitoring
competitors and staying abreast of online occurrences.
And, of course, the notification can be used for "ego
searches".
Ego Searches
What is an ego search? Find out where your name or company
is mentioned, view forum posts or online articles that
mention your name or company.
Trademarks
The best offense is a good defense. By monitoring newsgroups
or search engines for trademarked terms, you often head
off a future conflict. As a trademark owner, it is your
responsibility to actively protect your mark. Otherwise,
you could lose your trademark rights. Monitoring tools
send immediate notification should any suspected trademark
infringements occur.
Search Position
Statistics show that more than 85% of Internet users
find web sites with the help of the search engines.
Therefore, a website's search engine position is crucial
to its success. Prudent webmasters regularly check their
search engine position. Monitoring fluctuations and
re-indexing of major search engines affects keyword
terms and phrases. Monitoring of positions will alert
webmasters to any shifts before sales decline.
Competitor Watch
Monitoring newsgroups for mentions of competitors may
allow you opportunities to chime in and offer an alternative
solution in a helpful, friendly way. Knowing exactly
what your online competitors are doing provides a competitive
edge that can be used to your advantage.
Website Downtime
Accessibility is the most critical measure of your website's
performance. If customers can't access your site, they
can't shop; and if they can't shop, they can't buy.
More important, your business could gain a bad reputation
among your customers, which translates into negative
word of mouth and even worse, if you're highly visible,
negative press. So regardless of what else you monitor,
you want to monitor websites for downtime.
Take a look at the various tools available
and how they can be used to keep you current on relevant
issues.
WebAlerts - Recieve email
updates of the latest relevant Google results based
on your choice of query or topic. Alerts can be sent
based on information in Google News, Google Searches
or both.
http://www.google.com/webalerts
PubSub - PubSub matches
your requests against new information as it appears
real time. Searches can be categorized to search, blog
entries, SEC/EDGAR Filings, press releases, news group
posts or flight delays.
http://www.pubsub.com
Ego Alerts - Google news
search turned into an RSS feed.
http://www.justinpfister.com/gnewsfeed.php
Ebay Alerts - Ebay Alerts
monitoring will create an RSS feed to monitor Ebay auctions
for specific keywords or phrases. When a new item that
contains those keywords is added to Ebay you will receive
notification via your RSS feed!
http://www.freebiddingtools.com
Amazon Alerts - Generate
a URL which you can use to automatically search Amazon.com
with your favorite RSS news reader. It will automatically
update you when new items meet your search criteria.
I personally use it to look for new books on topics
I'm interested in, and I have the defaults set to do
the same, but you can adjust it to search any of Amazon's
stores. You can also adjust the search order and what
kind of items you wish to search.
http://www.oxus.net/amazon
Internet Seer - InternetSeer
remotely monitors your website to insure that your site
is available 24/7. If InternetSeer is unable to reach
your site, we will send you an immediate e-mail alert
that your site is unreachable.
http://www.internetseer.com
NetNewsTracker - NetNews
Tracker is a clipping service for Usenet newsgroups.
Newstracker searches newsgroups twice daily for any
specified words or phrases and delivers alerts via e-mail.
Newstracker can be used to monitor newsgroups for names,
company names, products, URLs, or any other topic of
interest.
http://www.netnewstracker.com
Other Suggested Resources -
Monitoring Tools - Monitoring Tools is
a directory of online monitoring tools and applications
http://www.monitoring-tools.net
Monitoring Software - Monitoring
Software is a collection of downloadable monitoring
software solutions.
http://www.monitoring-software.net
About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc.
http://www.notepage.net
and FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com
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This article may be used freely in opt-in
publications and websites, provided that the resource
box is included and the links are active. A courtesy
copy of the issue or a link to any online posting would
be greatly appreciated send an email to sharon@notepage.net
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