Google Alerts is useful and amusing!

This is probably old news to many blog readers, but worth a mention nonetheless. I highly recommend using Google Alerts to track what's being said about you, your credit union and anything else that interests you.

Google Alerts is a free service offered by Google which notifies its users by e-mail about the latest Web and news pages of their choice. I've been tracking a few search terms for awhile now and here are two tips to help you get the most out of the service.

Pick your frequency wisely. Three options are available: once a day, once a week or as it happens. I am a sucker for punishment and went for the as it happens option. After clogging my in-box and further contributing to my self-diagnosed ADD, I set up a rule in my e-mail application that moves alerts into a sub-folder automatically. I named the folder "00-Google Alerts" so it sorts to the top of my folder list. I go in and review the list about once a day to see what's up.

Refine your searches. First and foremost, use quotes. For example, one of the first alerts that I setup was Tim McAlpine (hold your narcissistic comments to yourself please). This yielded countless alerts with anything that had either Tim or McAlpine in it. Now, by refining the search to "Tim McAlpine" I receive only applicable alerts.

However, even using quotes isn't fool proof. I love this one from Buffalo News: "Tim McAlpine shot 6 under in bad conditions, playing "almost perfect golf." This definitely wasn't me, but it sure made my day.

And don't even get me started with the weirdness that comes when you ask to be alerted when "Cuckoo" is used on the Internet!

Like I said, this might be obvious to many of you, but I'm sure there is someone out there who hasn't yet tried Google Alerts.

Tim

P.S. What are some of the weirdest things you've learned about your own name or your credit union by searching the wonderful Web?

But I thought Google was against evil

I don't know if you noticed that I prefer credit unions to banks? This might come across subtley in my blog posts from time to time. So imagine my chagrin as I'm reading an article in Marketing Magazine about Canada's largest bank, RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) taking advantage of a new map advertising service being offered by Google.

Here's an exerpt from the article:

RBC puts itself on the map

RBC has placed its brand name in front of consumers who use online, in-car and mobile navigation systems, becoming the first Canadian financial company to do so.

Users of applications such as Google Maps will find the RBC icon indicating bank branch and automated teller locations when searching by name or by category—such as “financial institutions”—for a given area.

The development applies to both RBC Royal Bank in Canada and RBC Centura Bank in the United States.

The RBC icons will begin appearing in online map applications as those systems update their maps over the next few months.

Yikes. Come on Larry and Sergey, so it ain't so. You mean to tell me that Google is now going to sell virtual real estate to the highest bidder, even if that highest bidder is a big bank? Is nothing sacred? I thought you guys were against evil?

This is actually a pretty innovative idea that I wish the credit unions of Canada and US jumped at first. Oh well, just one more thing to fuel my dislike for those cagey big banks.

I am unclear if credit unions that are using the Google Map API, like we do on the Credit Unions of BC website, will have the RBC logo start appearing all over their maps as well. It sounds like you will have to initiate a specific search, but I'll have to check into this further.

Tim