There are millions of web pages,  discussion forums, blogs and chat rooms on the Internet and any one of them could be in the middle of holding a discussion about you and you may never know. Well there is a way to keep you aware of when your name is mentioned on the net and that is to make use of a free service called Google Alerts.

Google is in the business of trolling the web and indexing all the content it finds, it’s spiders are visiting millions of web pages every day indexing new content.

You can create a Google Alert based on your name ( or any other phrase ) and Google will send you an email as soon as their spiders spot your name on any web page.

This is a great tool to use if you are in the business of creating a personal brand. Hopefully the alerts will make you aware when good things are being written about you but if the situation ever arises where someone is questioning your good name you’ll be made aware of it fairly quickly via a Google Alert.

Alerts are simple to setup, you can do so here

Alerts can also be useful for getting someones attention, anyone who is establishing a brand on the web probably has a Google Alert setup. So if you want to grab their attention just write something about them on your website, they’ll be alerted to what you have written. Just make sure you only say nice things.