Do you monitor the incoming links in your dashboard? Have they been confusing you or making you a bit frustrated lately?
How about I tell you what’s happening and provide a few possible solutions.
About Incoming Links
Inside your dashboard you have an Incoming Links Widget that shows all the blogs that are linking to your blog.
Experienced bloggers rely heavily on these incoming links to find people who are citing their blog or name. The idea is you follow the link, see what’s be written and why, and choose if you want to engage in a conversation (by leaving a comment or writing a post). This is important for building relationships, conversations and your blog community.
Unfortunately the incoming links widget in our dashboard uses Google Blog Search and at the moment Google Blog Search is broken. Normally Google Blog Search indexes blog posts that link to your post or blog however it is now indexing all blogs that include links to your blog in its sidebar.
This means when ever a person writes a post and your blog is included as a link in their sidebar (e.g. their blog roll, recent comments) you will receive a new link in your incoming links widget. If they write 3 posts that day, without even citing your blog in their post, you will receive a new link. While it might be nice; it’s not helpful.
Hopefully this issue with Google Blog Search will be resolved soon but in the meantime here is one option.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts is an automatic notification system that advise you by email or RSS when it finds new items on web pages that match your search criteria.
Bloggers frequently use it to find people who cite their name or blog. The benefit of Google Alerts is it picks up all those posts where the bloggers have forgotten to include the link and only used your blog/name.
How to set up a Google Alert
- Go to Google
- Click on More and then select Even More
- Click on Alerts
- Enter the Search term, choose whether to receive notification by email or RSS and then click Create Alert
Here is what an email from Google Alerts looks like:
FINAL THOUGHTS
As a blogger it’s a good idea to use Google Alerts for picking up those posts where people mention your name or blog but forgot to link. My next post will provide another option for monitoring incoming links.
Are you currently using Google Alerts? And what do you use it for?
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Thanks for your information about all the happenings on Google blog. I use Google alert for every new information.
“Music and Life”
Music is very important in our life. Our life will be fun and cheerfll with music. Music is combination sound of instruments like guitar, piano, melody, bass, drum, violin, etc. If they are played together, they will create a nice sound. There are so many kinds of music, for example: jazz, pop, rock, dangdut, punk, and so on. Music gives a lot of advantages in our life, especially to show expression of our selves and to reduce our stress. First of all, music is one of the ways to express our feeling. As an illustration, when we are sad, we usually listen to melancolis song, for instance “my heart”,”feel’,”because of you”. On the other hand, when we are happy, we choose fun songs, such as “welcome to my paradise”,”umbrella”,”I just wanna say I love you”. Moreover,if we have idol singer, we will imitate their performance, like hair style, clothes, shoes, etc. As a result, we will be motivated to be a singer.
Second, music can reduce our stress. Naturally, we as a student are given a lot of assignments from the lecturer. We also have problems with someone, our family maybe, friend, our boyfriend. Consequently, we get stress and sometimes we don’t want to eat. Accordingly, we get sick. Therefore, to avoid that we have to take a rest and listen to the music bacause it can freshen our mind and make us forget our assignments and problems for a while. In summary, it is important for us to listen to the music to express our feeling and to reduce our stress.
“Music and Life”
Music is very important in our life. our life will be fun and cheerfll with music. music is combination sound of instruments like guitar, piano, melody, bass, drum, violin, etc. if they are played together, they will create a nice sound. there are so many kinds of music, for example: jazz, pop, rock, dangdut, punk, and so on. music gives a lot of advantages in our life, especially to show expression of our selves and to reduce our stress. first of all, music is one of the ways to express our feeling. as an illustration, when we are sad, we usually listen to melancolis song, for instance “my heart”,”feel’,”because of you”. on the other hand, when we are happy, we choose fun songs, such as “welcome to my paradise”,”umbrella”,|”I just wanna say I love you”. moreover,if we have idol singer, we will imitate their performance, like hair style, clothes, shoes, etc. As a result, we will be motivated to be a singer.
Second, music can reduce our stress. Naturally,
very useful information, thanks.
@Larry I’m so hoping that it is just a glitch with Google blog search. Regardless Google Alerts is a handy tool. Yes my next option is Technorati but into your feed reader — you should see what it does in your dashboard (not a nice look). At this rate it will probably not be posted until next week as full on traveling this week for a presentation. Also my SnagIT is on my PC and I travel with my Macbook.
@Dennis What are some of the keywords you use?
@Bryan Glad it was helpful. I love using Google Alerts. Strangely enough I normally prefer to use RSS but happy to use email for Alerts. Very weird of me?
I’m on it…nice post!
I use google alerts for everything – they are very informative
Sue,
Thanks for clarifying what was going on with Google Blog Search — I was wondering what was happening.
I use Google Alerts for the reason you cite, and also for key words on issues I’m particularly interested in — “online interactive” for example.
Is checking Technorati going to be the next option you suggest?
Larry