Google’s newish Blog Search is a handy way to keep track of the “buzz” about a particular blog, in addition to posts from that blog itself. Just go to blogsearch.google.com and type the URL of your blog into the box. The resulting search results include posts from your blog, as well as other bloggers’ posts that link to your site. Nifty!
Even better, Google will help you keep tabs on that buzz via email or your newsreader. Click on “blog alerts” in the left column to set up email notifications about new items, or copy the RSS/Atom feed links in the same place and track them in the newsreader of your choice.
One caveat, though: Spam blogs (aka splogs) crop up fairly frequently in these search results. And Google doesn’t seem to capture every post from the blog URL you enter (sometimes not any of them, depending on the blog platform behind that URL) so you’ll still need to use the blog’s own RSS feed. Still, this is a good way to track what people are saying about you.
Thanks to career writer Penelope Trunk, whose blog generates lots of buzz, for this tip.
