Alert marketing - Get Google search results by e-mailWritten by Jakob Jelling
Sometimes our jobs as marketers means we need to look beyond obvious. Google, for example, offers their Google Alerts service. At first glance, this may seem most useful to companies who want to track certain searches within their industry, or to hobbyists who want to stay on top of changes in their topics of interest. But Internet marketers can also use Google Alerts to help keep track of what's going on around net, and even to keep tabs on their direct competition for that matter. Google Alerts, which are email notifications, can be created based on top 10 Google news stories, but more helpful to marketers is possibility of creating alerts for top 20 Google web search results. By setting up alerts for your competitor's company, web site, brand, or product name, you can monitor search results for changes. Some results may indicate a new product launch, or perhaps a publicity campaign, and you will be able to make appropriate adjustments in your own business.
| | Stay in the know with Google SMSWritten by Jakob Jelling
The Short Messaging Service (SMS) from Google sends short, quick, text answers in response to your queries from an SMS-enabled mobile device, such as a cell phone. For example, you can look up phone numbers and addresses of local restaurants, do local phone book searches, compare prices from online merchants in Froogle to those you find in local stores, even look up definitions of words from dictionary. SMS has long been a common means of mobile communication in Europe. It has been available in US for some time, but hasn't been widely used. You don't need a phone with a web browser to use Google's SMS. Since information is transmitted as text only, without graphics, only ability to send and receive SMS messages is needed. At present, service is only available only in English, through major US wireless carriers like AT&T, Nextel, Sprint, and T-Mobile. Your service plan must allow for SMS messaging also. Use of SMS doesn't generally count against minutes under most plans, but both your SMS to Google and answer received from Google will typically count towards messages allowed.
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