Experimenting with web monitoring

In this era of social media management, we are often asked to monitor everything online.

The drawback is normally that we have to monitor the world to find out stuff that really only applies to a few counties or even just one. In addition, there are now so many different channels for communication, that we end up with some pretty complicated RSS fees and searches that it has become very time consuming and especially so when monitoring for multiple issues, brands or names.

There is another way. We can monitor everything that is newly indexed by search engines.

They limit what can be found by area, number of citations and a whole host of other limitations or simply do not index enough of the web each day to offer reliable data and, worse still the volumes can be very high.


Over the next few days, I will be doing tests on the pre-alpha edition of new software that, I hope will resolve most of these problems.

It is a programme that, theoretically finds new pages about a search term each day in individual countries.

The returns will, of course, include new entries in all manner of web pages but the experience we are gaining is helpful for future development.

There is a case for monitoring all new citations to provide comprehensive intelligence about a brand which can then be drawn into the online conversation.

Here are the first few returns for a test I did today for Yahoo and they give some idea as to where we have reached so far.

NKorea off US blacklist after nuke inspection deal - Yahoo! News After North Korea relented on nuclear inspection demands, the US on Saturday erased from a terrorism blacklist the communist country President Bush once ...
Yahoo Launches Analytics : ISEdb.COM As its latest attack to Google's supremacy in the search engine business, Yahoo! recently launched its own Web Analytics tool, a Web application enabling ...
Icahn Once Again Trying To Throw Yahoo's Yang Out On Ear? A reader insists that Carl Icahn is polling Yahoo's institutional investors to gauge support for another go at a palace coup (specifically, throwing Jerry ...
YouTube offers full-length CBS shows : Gina Hughes : Yahoo! Tech We've told you about Joost, Hulu, and Veoh, but all these sites may soon be forgotten now that YouTube has signed a deal with CBS and will start offering ...
Yahoo Developer Network at Future of Web Apps London (Yahoo ... This is an account from the perspective of us as exhibitors - there'll be coverage of the talks attended by Yahoos - Rajat Pandit to be exact - later on. ...
Yahoo seen as declining, while Microsoft looms : Technology ... SEATTLE - When Yahoo Inc. co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang spurned Microsoft Corp.' s rich buyout offer this spring, he promised that brighter days in Sunnyvale ...
Gamble fuels Burton's victory - NASCAR - Yahoo! Sports Opting to take fuel only on his final pit stop helped Jeff Burton win the Bank of America 500 and put himself back in title contention. - NASCAR news.


We can refine this quite a lot already but are the findings comprehensive.

I hope to find out over the next few hours.

Helpful ideas and suggestions will be welcome.