Ever get a feeling someone is talking about you? My mum likes to use the phrase ‘my ears are burning – someone must be talking about me’.
One of the interesting things about having a blog or two (or twenty) is that people do talk about you from time to time. Sometimes its because they like something you say, other times its because they don’t. But its always nice to know if they are and what they’re saying because it takes your blogging into a new interactive zone. So how do you know when they’re talking about you? Is it just an Ear Burning sensation or can you be a little more sure than that.
Fortunately there are a few tools that you might like to use:
– TrackBack – Probably the best way is to enable trackback on your blog – this will notify you if someone links to your posts.
– Technorati – This tool is pretty cool – set up a watch list or manually check who is linking to your blog (example)
– Bloglines – Set up a search feed on Bloglines with your name, your blog’s name etc. I do this and am amazed at the articles and posts that I come up in. Its actually alerted me a few times to being quoted in papers that I’d never have known about otherwise.
– Referals – Stats – Check your stats to see where people are coming from. I like Sitemeter because it tells you the last 100 referrers.
I’m sure others of you use other methods – share your ‘Vanity Check’ tips in comments below.
Google Alerts is another example, which works quite well. I have written about this before – in Germany we do have blogstats.de which does a much better job than Technorati & co – it is kind of disappointing to have less information that I expected. You know, big world and better tools and all those things.
Google Alerts on web and Technorati work best, if you have a uniq thing people will quote you on – I think problogger is a very good term for that.. I suspect you will be in a few months ‘the darren’ and can then be found by just entering Darren ;))
The sitemeter link isn’t working
I use Bloglines and Technorati’s watch list together. The watch list are delivered as an RSS Feed which can be subscribed to on Bloglines.
Thanks Duncan – fixed.
Good tips Fitzgerald and Nicole!
PubSub.com is another engine where you can set up alerts ahead of time. I have a few set up for my name, the charity I work for and some others. It also had quite an interesting LinkRanks section but it’s been offline for several months now, ever since an influx of rather dubious websites seemed to inflitrate its algorithms!
Heh, ProBlogger is number 12 when you Google “Darren”. It’s just a matter of time.
LOL Danger – actually I’m number 9 and 10 for two of my other blogs also – although I’ve slipped down the rankings for them because I actually used to hold the number one position until Darren Barefoot started blogging and til Darren Hayes released his latest album! Not that I ever check these things! :-)
I always feel sorry for people with names like “John Smith” – it must make vanity-checking much more difficult than if you were Darren Rowse or Michael Moncur. Word to the wise: if your own name isn’t very unique, choose a unique blog name.
I find that Bloglines’ search for my name works much better than Pubsub–I get about 10 alerts on Bloglines for every one on Pubsub, and the latter are often a few days late.
Hey, you can make it. Nicole is not a very uncommon name, and I am doing quite fine ;))
I just have to use my whole name and remember that I’m not a watercolor painter or antiques dealer. If I just use Yvonne, I have to compete with DiCarlo and the trannie site.