Ego searches are free and simple searches designed to monitor blogs and news
portals for mentions of your company, product, competitors or other specific
keywords. Conducting ego searches not only allows you to stay informed, but also
allows you to maintain a strategic advantage over competing companies. A number
of new Internet services are freely available that make these 'ego searches'
painless and easy.
Dynamically created keyword based RSS feeds, update in your RSS reader or news
aggregators, each time new information containing the keyword appears in the
searched resources. The dynamic feeds match requests against new information, as
it comes online in real time. The following free services allow for RSS feed ego
searches.
Google News - Simply conduct a keyword search of Google News and then click the
text that says "RSS" then save the url of the RSS feed into your news reader.
Every time a new article with that keyword appears in Google News the feed in
your RSS reader will automatically update.
http://news.google.com/news
BlogPulse - Find out what is being said about your products, company or your
industry in the blogosphere. Conduct a keyword or url search on BlogPulse. Click
the orange RSS icon above the search results and save the feed in your reader.
Each time the keyword appears in a blog indexed by BlogPulse you will receive a
new item in your feed reader. Another feature of BlogPulse is it will graph the
keyword occurrences, providing a picture representation so that trends can be
easily visualized. Hovering over the lines of the graph will provide details of
actual blog mentions.
http://www.blogpulse.com
PubSub - Search on a keyword, then save and add the feed to your RSS reader
using the icons provided. Optionally with PubSub you can direct your search to
only alert you of posts in specific areas of interest including Press Releases,
SEC/EDGAR Filings, Newsgroup Posts, or Weblog Entries
http://www.pubsub.com
Technorati - Create watch lists, by entering the search term add item to the
watch list and then scroll to the bottom click the blue RSS icon to obtain the
url of the RSS feed that can be added to your reader. Technorati is a real-time
search engine that keeps track of what is going on in the blogosphere. In order
to setup a watchlist you will have to create a Technorati account.
http://www.technorati.com
Ice Rocket - Simply search Ice Rocket then click the RSS 2.0 button to obtain
the url of the RSS feed that contains your search term. Add the url to your RSS
reader or newsaggregator.
http://www.icerocket.com/
Find Articles - Traditional media channels can even be monitored using RSS.
FindArticles routinely scans magazines and publications for keyword mentions.
Conduct a search then click "RSS Alert" to obtain the url to the RSS feed. Add
the feed to your reader to receive instant notification of new articles.
http://www.findarticles.com/
NewsTrove - NewsTrove indexes millions of news articles from a myriad of
sources. Build an RSS feed on any topic imaginable. Enter your search words in
the search box. Click 'Search' click the orange XML icon on the right side of
the search results page and save the feed to your news reader.
http://www.newstrove.com
BlogDigger - BlogDigger monitors the blogosphere and generally what is said
daily in the blogs. Conduct a search on Blogdigger and click the orange XML icon
to retrieve the url of the search feed. The feed should then be added to your
RSS reader.
http://www.blogdigger.com/
DayPop - Conduct a search and click the icon on the right that says XML, save
the feed to your RSS aggregator. Only the most recent search results will
appear.
http://www.daypop.com
Yahoo News - Conduct a search then click "view as RSS" in the right column save
the feed in your aggregator. The feed will check Yahoo news for mentions.
http://news.yahoo.com/
Overall, ego searches are an excellent way to stay informed and maintain a
strategic advantage over competitors. Knowing exactly what your online
competitors are doing provides a competitive edge that can be used to your
advantage. Keyword RSS feeds can be used to monitor key phrases for trademark
abuses or monitoring the effectiveness of a specific press promotion.
Although they sound daunting ego searches are simply good business sense.
.