RSS Ego Searches

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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