By Sawyer ReedEveryone in the online community already realizes Google has the largest online presence a business could ask for, thanks to its large spectrum of services. Although some experts dismiss them, one service to be noted by any good business person is Google Alerts.

Google Alerts can be used to monitor virtually any topic on the Internet: a specific business, name, group, or even update on a current news story. The service will gather general information about the subject, compile a list of updates and email the data to the user.

If the objective of the business is to monitor competition, Google Alerts provides unbiased and unfiltered search results. Simply visiting the website of the competitor in question may be a quick and easy way to gain information, but you only have access to the information your competitor wants people to know. Finding negative news and feedback needs to be reviewed as well, but you won't find that on their website. It could take valuable time to manually search for news content on several different sources about different competitors. After all, time is money, right? To avoid such a monetary loss use Google Alerts and it will do all the searching for you, saving you precious dinero.

It’s just common sense that slander of a person will most likely affect the reputation of his business, and vice versa. And if that seems to be the case, I know I’d like to know about it. Once again, Google Alerts! When it says you can track any topic, it means ANY topic. If one desires to get alerts anytime his or her name comes up in the news they will have, at their fingertips with an email from Google Alerts.

These are only two examples of the way that Google Alerts can be used. And like Google itself, the uses for Google Alerts are unending and make it easy to follow a sports team, a stock, the home-buyers’ market or anything! And the service does not just search major news sources; if it’s on the Internet Google Alerts will find it and will exemplify its namesake by alerting you of any updates or changes.

So go forth and set up your Google Alerts!