Google is an essential tool for entrepreneurs. Apart from research it is a very valuable tool for keeping an eye on the competition. Google Alerts is a service where Google will send you an email anytime a term you specify is found by its crawler. In other words: roughly any time a certain term is used on the Internet.

Because you can use it to watch what others are saying about you, your business, your industry or whatever else would give you a competitive advantage.

If desired, you can narrow it down to just what blogs, or the news say about a search term. You can also limit how often it emails you. From as-it-happens to once a week.

This service use to be horrible, inaccurate, incomplete, and late when it worked at all. About a month ago something magic happened and suddenly it works as advertised.

Above all else – its free!