Wednesday 9 December 2009

Google Alerts


Who hasn't been ego-surfing? Surfing the web for your own name...or your blog name...or your book name...or some combination. I've come across many fascinating sounding namesakes, many of them dead, I'm afraid.

Tips: I recommend using extra words as a filter like "writer" or "poet." If one particular person keeps coming up who lives in Ohio, for example,ignore any entry with "Ohio" in it by type "-Ohio"

My biggest tip though is to use Google Alerts to get regular updates. It's like having a spy always listening on the web. While you sit back and drink your capuccino or even write. Powerful...and fun.

See this post at Daily Writing Tips for more.

5 comments:

Niamh B said...

Thanks so much for that, after reading your post, I just googled my name and found myself on the hotpress website, whoop de doo!

Titus said...

Nope, not tried it before. But I have now.
I wish this was me;

Joanne McKay, a figure skater in the nightly show at the Conrad Hilton Hotel in Chicago in the 60's, couldn't help falling for Bobby Hull when he suddenly appeared, his face stitched, his clothes stylish, one afternoon at practice and bent to hand her a skate guard.

"He was handsome, dashing, charismatic," she remembers.

Carolyn Jess-Cooke said...

Sitemeter too - scary to see who's reading your blog!

Emerging Writer said...

Niamh - hotpress, very cool.
Titus, Maybe this is your alter ego - I see a short story.
Carolyn - scary. I use google analytics.

Rachel Fox said...

There's a Rachel Fox in the USA who writes cowboy poetry. I figured we weren't going to overlap much and that's why I went with that name (someone else is already using my real name in the UK and I was looking for something that wouldn't cause confusion). Now I'm quite attached to the RF name and prefer it to my real one. I may even kill off the real one altogether one day. It will be a nasty affair - brutal but effective.