Today I’ve been checking out Andy Beal’s latest venture – Trackur.
Trackur is an online reputation monitoring tool that has been developed for companies and individuals wanting to take a serious look at what is being said about them in the blogosphere. I can also see the possibilities for using this tool for higher end bloggers who want to track what’s being written about them and/or their niche topic.
The best way to get a handle on Trackur and what it does is to signup for the free 14 day trial. The second best way to understand it is to watch Andy Demo Trackur in the following video.
There are of course free tools that you to monitor the blogosphere (including Google’s News Alerts and Technorati’s Watch Lists) but Trackur is a much more integrated package that is sure to appeal to a higher end user. You can see how it compares to Google News Alerts here:
The importance of such tools to bloggers is significant. Not only do they allow you to monitor what is being said about you and your company in the blogosphere – but to be able to set up tools to monitor when keywords in your niche are being mentioned is very important – particularly if you have a blog with a news focus.
Starting at $18 a month and ranging up to $188 a month I suspect that a lot of ProBlogger readers will stick with the free tools – however for those looking for a more feature rich package Trackur will be a real option.
PS: Speaking of Google News Alerts….
Just as I was writing this post an email hit my inbox with one of my News Alerts. I set up one for “Darren Rowse” and here’s what it sent me today (click to enlarge):
It’s great to get news results and blog results like this each day – however….
1. The first result (highlighted in green) is actually for a post written in May 2007
2. The second result (highlighted in red) is actually for a scraper site that picked up one of my own posts. What I find interesting is that Google News found the scraper site and ranked it and it didn’t find my own site’s version of that post. This is something I see every day in News Alerts – they attempt to cut out the duplicate content but in doing so seem to be promoting scraper versions instead of the original content.
3. Lastly I’m a little confused as to why they sent me an email with 5 search results for my name when their Blog Search Results for my name show 20 or so results in the last 24 hours.
Don’t get me wrong – Google News Alerts rock and are an important part of my own monitoring of keywords that are relevant to me – however they’re not perfect and I know they miss a lot and put up flunky results from time to time – I guess you get what you pay for.
I had started using this method unofficialy for a project i have going and am now glad to see it’s a proven method … glad to know i was on the right track.
Interesting post.
I will consider using this for my blog. But not until my financial blog becomes a bit more well known (it’s still in the beginning stages)…
Thanks for all the info Darren
Interesting tool. Thanks for posting about it! I’ll definitely try it for a couple of clients who are in the medical industry [‘word of mouth’ and online testimonials/forums can either make or break a sale for them]. As for individual use, I’m not sure I’ll have use for this as of yet.
This is a nice tool i did not know about. thanks for the post. i will check out google alerts also..
:-)
Thanks for the heads up.
Google Alerts is pretty flaky, as Darren points out. I have found exactly the same problems with GA. However, such a tool is becoming vital for bloggers and a professional level one is quite attractive.
I wonder if Google won’t just up it’s game. Here hoping.
Rob
let’s check it out
Never tried google alerts before… what do you do when you find that someone has scraped your site?
And also yes, I will be sticking with free tools for now.. :-)
I agree with the alerts being flaky. I setup a few RSS feeds to track my site name, my name, some keywords as Darren suggested in an earlier post a couple weeks ago. The stuff that came in, even using ‘Sort by date’ in the original search was mostly junk. Tons of slog spam, Some REALLY old stuff. I didn’t find much useful – granted I’m not exactly ‘A’ list – I did it out of curiosity. But still surprised at the random stuff Google was spewing out.
What will they think of next. I’m afraid that I’m not quite to the point where I need something like that, would be great if I was. However, I’m working hard on it and look forward to the day I need such a tool. I think I’ll bookmark this page if nothing else but to keep me motivated. Thanks.
Well, if Trackur gives a detailed information on my traffic then I wouldn’t hesitate in signing up with Trackur. We can always take the better options rather than sticking to just any one.
Cheers.
Thanks for the post Darren!
If you spend any amount in online advertising, then $18 per month is a small percentage to ensure your hard work is not ruined by an attack from a blogger. :-)
Based on your post, am I to assume that Trackur should be used in conjunction with Google; or should one devote yourself to Trackur and get rid of Google?
Though I am not ready to sign up for it yet, I can see huge potential for it…Especially for companies it can be such a valuable investment (valuable and not expensive)…
Andy Beal,
What exactly do you mean by being ruined by an attack from a blogger?
How exactly is this done?
Do you have some examples?
@Reginald – Google is full of examples. Search for “Dell Hell” and you’ll see the most famous example. :-)
Been using G’s alerts for a little while, also always found them to be not as capable as they could be.
I’m wondering what other social/tracking/alert systems are out there too.
Web mashup development systems such as Yahoo! Pipes make it possible to build useful, specialized reputation monitoring tools. As an example, I have created a pipe for keeping track of online media coverage (news, photos and videos) of ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli: http://pipes.yahoo.com/amoroso/nespoliscope