Everything that happens on the Internet sooner or later ends up being recorded on Google servers. Since the company’s robots scan every website, social network and service word by word for content, Google gives you the ability to receive alerts if your name is encountered. Or in other concrete terms, it’s a good way to find out if someone is talking about you on the Internet.
There is no doubt that Google is a bottomless pit when it comes to data storage because its main goal is to categorize every corner of the Internet so that we can locate it with a search. This desire for compilation, which has its dark side in the form of tracking user data, can also be turned to your advantage. Their alert service is really convenient.
Ask Google to notify you if it considers your name anywhere
Privacy is important, much more than we sometimes think. Because a simple message This can create a huge credibility hole for us., seeing our name appear on a website triggers reactions that are often not very positive. To prevent this type of content from being indexed, there is the right to be forgotten. And to satisfy this right, we must first discover all the sites to which we are referred.
The alert option for the appearance of specific words on the Internet is called something like this: Google Alerts. It is configurable in each user account and you do not need to pay for it: the company offers it as standard and for free. It is very useful to configure these alerts if you do not want someone talking about you on the Internet, since Google will warn you if your name appears written in any of the content it indexes. That’s most of the Internet.
To configure Google Alerts, simply follow the following steps. These are valid on both mobile and computer:
- Go to this link and sign in with your Google account if you’re not already signed in.
- You will see that Google Alerts offers you a preconfigured warning: “Internet presence“. With your name: press the + and you will have created this alert.
- Google will send you an email every time it sees your name written on a website, social network, and any other service from which it indexes content.
- If you add ” ” to the words that trigger the alert, Google will only notify you if it finds strictly that text. You will see that Google offers the alert with your name in this format.
- Besides the name, you can choose more alerts: our advice is to enter your email in case it is leaked on a website.
- Additionally, you can set alerts linked to your identity. Last names, first names of your parents, aliases of your social networks…
In the event that Google warns you because it has detected the publication of your name, you can exercise your right to be forgotten from here: Google will deindex the page on which it talks about you so that no one can find you s he uses the search engine (provided they approve the application). Additionally, you can contact media outlets to ask them to remove you from their pages.
You can use Google Alerts to notify you of any issues, not just those related to your identity. A specific movie, a series, books… This is a really useful option.
Cover image | Modified mid-term
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