Google is making it a little easier for you to get an alert whenever your name gets mentioned on the internet.
Now, when you Google yourself, so long as you’re logged into Google and you’ve allowed it to save your web and app activity, Google will show you a new widget at the bottom of the first page of search results that will help you easily set up a Google Alert to track new references to your name.

This is a reasonable move for Google to make. Google Alerts have been around since 2003. These days, if you want to find out what’s online about you, you Google yourself; you don’t set up a Google Alert. But the thing is that even though they’re not the hot new thing, Google Alerts work well. You can adjust settings — like email frequency, source types, languages, regions, whether to only send the best results, and the email address to send alerts to. So Google Alerts provide the back end for this new tool.
First up, users need to make sure they’re logged in to their Google account and that Google has been granted permission to track Web and App Activity. This can be switched on from the Activity Controls menu. “Save your search activity on apps and in browsers to make searches faster and get customized experiences in Search, Maps, Now, and other Google products,” says the Activity Controls page.
Next, the Stay in the loop widget will appear right at the bottom of the first page of results. Setting up Google Alerts from here on is easy. There’s already user’s name in quotes on the Google Alerts page. Users can choose from a number of suggestions to get alerts for. Categories vary from music and companies to politics, sports and automobiles. Delivery time can be chosen form settings button. There’s also a digest button that allows users to receive all alerts in a single mail. Other settings that can be tweaked with include source type, language, email frequency and region.