More Love for Google....

As someone who is trying to start their own business while still working a standard 9-5 (well, if we are being honest, more like 8-6) job during the day I need all the help I can get!  It’s waay to easy to get distracted following a lovely trail of blog posts and twitter feeds and then look at the clock and realize multiple hours have passed and that I’ve gotten nothing done.  Sigh.   So, I LOVE products that multi-task for me, or at least make things easier for me – basically I love Google. 

It all started with Google Reader – a steaming post of my favorite blogs that I can quickly access on my blackberry?  YES PLEASE.  Next, I discovered Google Documents - I could share information with my bridesmaids and keep documents online that I could access anywhere without constantly spamming myself by emailing them back and fourth.  Then, when I started blogging more frequently I starting monitoring my traffic and viewers with Google Analytics.  I love looking at where my visitors are coming from and get really excited when they are from faraway places like New Zealand and Egypt.  I also added Google FeedBurner later on since some of the information it monitors is slightly different.

Recently, I learned of another amazing Google product from my friend Meredith, Google ALERTS! 

From the Google Website :

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:

• monitoring a developing news story
• keeping current on a competitor or industry
• getting the latest on a celebrity or event
• keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams

Or, um – stalking yourself obsessively?  I input a few variations of key words relating to my business 4^th&Folded and each time someone uses them or links to me I get an email linking to the story or post.  Pretty clever huh?  You can adjust how often you receive the information, including getting it as-it-happens.  I found this to be incredibly useful since analytics only runs once a day and I don’t usually see the article or post linking to me until the next day when I investigate the spike in traffic.  For me it took a little manipulating of the search terms to get results I wanted.  I was getting a lot of stories about poker players who “folded” their hands and came in “4^th”….not quite what I was going for :).

Do you use Google Alerts or have any technology time savers?