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 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.
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