#9 Google Alerts: My Secret Weapon for Spying on (Uhh I Mean… Researching) the Competition
One way to keep up with what’s working for the authors on your research list? Let Google do the work for you. It’s time to work smarter, not harder, y’all.
What I did:
Set up 10 Google Alerts for my successful indie-pub YA authors
Added 4 alerts for small press YA fantasy authors (to see how their marketing strategies differed from indie efforts)
Created 5 alerts for huge trad-pubbed YA fantasy authors (for comparison)
How these alerts work:
You tell Google which authors you want to track, and any time they’re mentioned in a blog post or a review site, you’ll get an email delivered straight to your inbox.
These authors are all in your genre, right? This way you know which book reviewers are actively posting in your genre (to start a list of who you might reach out to later when you’re looking for reviews).
You’ll also see what news outlets are covering your authors, and when things they post on social media go viral (so you can add to the discussion in real-time, hop on a trend, or brainstorm content that might work for you too in the moment).
But instead of you having to spend hours researching to dig up these insights like we did with our Amazon indie research, after you set up the alerts, Google will do all of the work for you, so you can sit back, relax, and watch the magic unfold (no wand required).
How to Set These Up:
Sign in with a Google account. (The email address associated with this account is where the alert emails will be delivered, so keep that in mind.)
Navigate to the Create an alert about… text box.
Enter the name of one of the authors you want to receive alerts for. Here are a few pro-tips for things I had to learn the hard way 😜:
Enter the author name in double quotes (to tell the search engine that you’re looking for those names next to each other).
Example: “Holly Black”If they have a fairly common name, add the word “Author” into the search phrase too.
Example: “Holly Black Author”
If you don’t, you might get random obituary emails for people with the same or similar names. Ask me how I know 😬.Press the Show Options drop-down next to the Create Alert button.
Modify the settings to determine how often you’ll receive alert emails for this author, the content the alert is looking for (blogs, news, etc.), the language of the content, etc.
Once you’re happy with your alert, press Create Alert.
Your alert should appear in alphabetical order in your Alerts list, and you’ll get an email any time that author pops up in search results.
Final pro-tip: Create alerts for a few of the most successful or upcoming book titles in your genre to get notified when new marketing content and book review content pops up as well so you can learn from it!
📌 Next up: Track where my “who I want to be when I grow up” authors are being mentioned. Find book review blogs covering them. Maybe gently insert myself into those spaces later.
💬 Do you use Google Alerts for anything else author-related? Any sneaky search hacks we should know? Share your best tips below!
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