Posted by - February 25th, 2011
Google Alerts is a service that provides e-mail updates on Google results for a specific set of search terms. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been using this Beta service to track keywords that I want to use in upcoming blog posts.
In addition, I have tracked the titles of my blogs to see what came through on the alerts. My hope was that this service would provide me with good leads and valuable insights as to how my blogs were tracked by Google. Overall, I’d say that the value of information provided compared to the amount of time needed to analyze the information is not worth it.
Here’s the good thing about the alerts – it validates whether or not recent posts from your blog are found somewhere within the Google network. When you are creating alerts, it allows you to choose where you want Google to look for the keywords you select, including news, blogs, web, comprehensive, video and groups. I chose the “comprehensive” option and opted for daily alert deliveries.
The problem I found is that beyond the validation of my own blog posts showing up, the results were not very “comprehensive” or useful in providing qualified leads to good content. I recognize that the goal of Google Alerts is probably not to qualify the content, so I don’t really consider this a failure on the part of the service; it just makes the time spent sifting through the results laregely unproductive. Essentially, it is a ‘hit-or-miss’ approach to research, whereas most professional bloggers need to utilize more targeted methods.
So, what would make Google Alerts a more useful service for pro bloggers? Adding an Advanced Search option might be helpful to further qualify and customize desired results.
I probably will continue to utilize Google Alerts with a much lower level of expectations. If you have had different results or would like to make any suggestions for how to better utilize the alerts, please feel free to share them in the comments.
Lead Inspectors – Blogging Tips, Social Media, Web Apps
Posted in Termites - No Comments »
Tags: Alerts, Bloggers, Google, Time, Using, Waste
Posted by - February 11th, 2011
Blogged.com is a new interactive blog directory that officially launched today. On the surface, it seems to look similar to Blog Catalog or Bloghub; however, once you begin to explore the site, it reveals the potential to be something more than a typical blog directory.
One key difference is that most of the blogs have been reviewed and rated by “professional editors.” These editors apparently use specific criteria to help filter out spam (or scam) blogs and provide readers with some good leads. The ratings are based on “Frequency of Updates, Relevance of Content, Site Design, and Writing Style.”
The
About Us page says that the site is primarily designed for blog readers, as opposed to blog authors. I’m not sure if this is a realistic assertion, as the majority of blog readers that I’ve met are also blog authors.
The company does claim to benefit blog authors by better connecting them with their readers through the review and rating process. Again, while I understand the value to which they allude, I also think that actual comments, site traffic and subscriber numbers are a much better indicator than a review on any of the blog directory sites.
Having said that, Blogged.com does have a lot of potential to expand a blogs readership, if it can deliver on its goals and objectives. To do this, though, I think they will need to find a way to compete with traditional search engines for people looking to find specific types of content, which may be a challenge.
From a reader’s perspective, the site does offer some useful tools, such as bookmarking and good search options. I also like that certain blogs and bloggers are featured. Readers will definitely be able to discover new blogs and easily see which are rated high, which could save them time as well.
At the present time,
Blogged.com is slightly more interesting than a typical blog directory, and it has the potential of being a much more valuable source of blog traffic to publishers if it can really attract a large amount of new blog readers to buy into their service.
Click
here to register and learn more about the site.
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Lead Inspectors – Blogging Tips, Social Media, Web Apps
Posted in Termites - No Comments »
Tags: Blog., Blogged, Directory, More, Than, Typical
Google Alerts is a service that provides e-mail updates on Google results for a specific set of search terms. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been using this Beta service to track keywords that I want to use in upcoming blog posts.
