Using Google Alerts to Track Copies of Your Web Content

In this post I will look at one easy-to-use method of monitoring Google results for duplicate work of yours, which you can then use to take the appropriate action.

What is Google Alerts?

Google Alerts are simply e-mails sent to you when a specific set of criteria you setup is found. The search criteria are a set of search terms against the Google index, and when there are new items for those search terms an e-mail is sent to you.

An alert can be setup for searches against News, Web, Blogs, Video and Groups.

You can easily setup Google Alerts by visiting the Google Alerts home page and enter your search criteria on the form provided. You can then manage your alerts from your Google account.

Using Google Alerts to Monitor Your Content

Now that you have an idea of what Google Alerts actually is, let’s see how we can use that to monitor your Web content. Keep in mind that this isn’t 100% foolproof, but it can help you find those who duplicate your content.

Within my posts I try to link to other posts within my blog. This helps to provide more information to my visitors, but it can also help to monitor my pages with Google Alerts. Here is how I do that:

1. I navigate to the Google Alerts home page. This is where I will create a new alert.
2. Since my posts usually contain a link to another post on Technically Easy, I will use that as a search term. Beside Search Items I will enter link:technicallyeasy.net. This will alert me when another site contains a link to my blog.
3. Beside Type I select Comprehensive.
4. For How often, I select once a day as I don’t need more alerts than that.
5. I then enter my e-mail address to receive the alerts, and then click Create Alert.
6. You should now receive a confirmation e-mail. You will need to click the link in the e-mail to activate your alert.

You can use any search terms you would like to use to monitor the Google search results. The search criteria above won’t work if someone were to change the location of the links, or if a post doesn’t contain another link to your blog or Web site. You can always come up with your own method of keeping track of your hard work.

As a side note, the above alert will also inform you of who has linked to your blog or Web site.

Summary

This post provided a brief overview of Google Alerts as well as step-by-step instructions for creating an alert. A simple example was provided that can allow you to track other sites that may copy your content and post it on their site. I have been able to catch a few sites that have copied my content.

If you have other ideas of finding those that duplicate your content, I would like to hear them. Just post your ideas in the comments section.