How to Use Google Desktop as a Keyword or Reputation Monitoring Tool

Apart from many customizable features, there is one awesome option Google Desktop offers: web clips gadget that allows to monitor any RSS feed.

1. Use the default web clips gadget

Web Clips gadget automatically displays updates to web pages you visit. You can also manually add RSS/Atom feeds to see updates to your favorite blogs and other websites.

You can add any RSS feeds there to make it track all your favorite blogs and social bookmarking networks.

Let’s say you want to track your (brand) name mentions on Twitter. So you:

• Go to Twitter search,
• Search for your (brand) name,
• Grab the RSS link of the search results;
• Go to your Google Desktop web clips gadget;
• Click on “Options”;
• Add the Twitter search results RSS:

After that Google Desktop will be updating you of the Twitter mentions:

Additionally, Google desktop will (gently) update you on the new word mentions:

A couple of more options to consider:

• 2 Digg (really simplistic, yet useful plugin that allows you to track any category and or topic on Digg for hot or upcoming stories: really useful for monitoring user-generated news and buzz)
• Google News Gadget
  (This one is nothing extra-ordinary but can be considered if you use Google news search often.)