Free Website Content - It Is All About Ego Searches
Ego searches are free and simple searches
designed to monitor blogs and news portals for mentions
of your company, product, competitors or other specific
keywords. Conducting ego searches not only allows you to
stay informed, but also allows you to maintain a strategic
advantage over competing companies.
A number of new Internet services are freely
available that make these 'ego searches' painless and easy.
Dynamically created keyword based RSS feeds, update in your
RSS reader or news aggregators, each time new information
containing the keyword appears in the searched resources.
The dynamic feeds match requests against new information,
as it comes online in real time.
The following free services allow for RSS
feed ego searches.
Google News - Simply conduct a keyword
search of Google News and then click the text that says
"RSS" then save the url of the RSS feed into your
news reader. Every time a new article with that keyword
appears in Google News the feed in your RSS reader will
automatically update.
http://news.google.com/news
BlogPulse - Find out what is being
said about your products, company or your industry in the
blogosphere. Conduct a keyword or url search on BlogPulse.
Click the orange RSS icon above the search results and save
the feed in your reader. Each time the keyword appears in
a blog indexed by BlogPulse you will receive a new item
in your feed reader. Another feature of BlogPulse is it
will graph the keyword occurrences, providing a picture
representation so that trends can be easily visualized.
Hovering over the lines of the graph will provide details
of actual blog mentions.
http://www.blogpulse.com
PubSub - Search on a keyword, then
save and add the feed to your RSS reader using the icons
provided. Optionally with PubSub you can direct your search
to only alert you of posts in specific areas of interest
including Press Releases, SEC/EDGAR Filings, Newsgroup Posts,
or Weblog Entries
http://www.pubsub.com
Technorati - Create watch lists, by
entering the search term add item to the watch list and
then scroll to the bottom click the blue RSS icon to obtain
the url of the RSS feed that can be added to your reader.
Technorati is a real-time search engine that keeps track
of what is going on in the blogosphere. In order to setup
a watchlist you will have to create a Technorati account.
http://www.technorati.com
Ice Rocket - Simply search Ice Rocket
then click the RSS 2.0 button to obtain the url of the RSS
feed that contains your search term. Add the url to your
RSS reader or newsaggregator.
http://www.icerocket.com/
Find Articles - Traditional media channels
can even be monitored using RSS. FindArticles routinely
scans magazines and publications for keyword mentions. Conduct
a search then click "RSS Alert" to obtain the
url to the RSS feed. Add the feed to your reader to receive
instant notification of new articles.
http://www.findarticles.com/
NewsTrove - NewsTrove indexes millions
of news articles from a myriad of sources. Build an RSS
feed on any topic imaginable. Enter your search words in
the search box. Click 'Search' click the orange XML icon
on the right side of the search results page and save the
feed to your news reader.
http://www.newstrove.com
BlogDigger - BlogDigger monitors the
blogosphere and generally what is said daily in the blogs.
Conduct a search on Blogdigger and click the orange XML
icon to retrieve the url of the search feed. The feed should
then be added to your RSS reader.
http://www.blogdigger.com/
DayPop - Conduct a search and click
the icon on the right that says XML, save the feed to your
RSS aggregator. Only the most recent search results will
appear.
http://www.daypop.com
Yahoo News - Conduct a search then
click "view as RSS" in the right column save the
feed in your aggregator. The feed will check Yahoo news
for mentions.
http://news.yahoo.com/
Overall, ego searches are an excellent way
to stay informed and maintain a strategic advantage over
competitors. Knowing exactly what your online competitors
are doing provides a competitive edge that can be used to
your advantage. Keyword RSS feeds can be used to monitor
key phrases for trademark abuses or monitoring the effectiveness
of a specific press promotion. Although they sound daunting
ego searches are simply good business sense.
About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com
software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and
podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for FeedForDev
http://www.feedfordev.com
an RSS component for developers.
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appreciated send an email to sharon@notepage.net
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