Pardon my spinning propeller...

Ok, here's something that might be of interest to you bloggers out there.

I was recently looking through the statistics on my blog and noticed a new name pop up on the referral list. It was from Carlin Brooks who is an elder at the Maple Hill Church where we used to attend. I had no idea that he was blogging...or reading mine. He had some nice things to say (thank you Carlin!).

Anyway, I got to thinking, I only knew he did that because someone clicked on the link. How could I know if someone links to my blog (or web site or anything) even if no one clicks on the link? Some time ago, I was researching a programming problem that I was having. Someone had mentioned a similar problem in his blog, and the developer of the product commented on it and helped him fix the problem. He mentioned that he found the post using Google Alerts, so I thought I'd check it out.

Google alerts lets you create search terms that will be automatically executed for you on a scheduled basis. The results will then be emailed to you. Anything that has already been sent to you will be filtered out so that all you receive will be new information.

Here is an easy way to set up an alert for your blog. Go to Blog Search @ Google, type link:yourblogaddress.com (I typed link:constanttransformation.blogspot.com. When the results are displayed, there will be a link that says:

Create an email alert for link:constanttransformation.blogspot.com

Click on that, enter your email address and you are done.

I received my first notification this morning and look what it was:

Google Blogs Alert for: link:constanttransformation.blogspot.com
My evil friend Donnie...
By John Grant(John Grant)
My evil friend Donnie "tagged" me. Can't he see that I struggle just to post, much less to play blog games? His comment on the game?... "Man....that's a lot of work, I hope these don't come around too often...." ...
Finding Our Place -- reflections... - http://johngrant.blogspot.com/

See, I never would have known about this had I not set up the alert since nobody reads John's blog anyway (just teasing John, I know Amy reads it) ;-)