I’ve been using Google Alerts for ages now as a great way of keeping in touch with the latest goings on in whatever I’m interested in.

They allow you to pre-filter the deluge of information that’s out there on the net and at least give you a head start on fighting the information overload we all face.

I also use them to keep track of my products and name, such as I’ve got an alert out for Ray Harvard, which allows me to keep track of whenever my name crops up in Google, such as in Blog posts.

However I’ve now just found another use for them…

With this great tip on John Jantsch’s – Duct Tape Marketing Blog.

By using the search term -

link:http://www.yourblogurl.com

where www.yourblogurl.com is the address of your blog.

It will send you an alert when Google detects someone linking to your blog.
(You can choose how often from the options when you create the alert.)

As John explains, one use could be to network with those linking to your blog if you wished.

I’ve just put it into practice and I’m looking forward to seeing what results it produces.

Read John’s Full Article here Google Alerts Hack

How have you used Google Alerts ?