As the number of sites that I have grows, I continue to look for little tricks and tools that can help me keep track of how my sites are doing. On neat little trick that I have found is to use google alerts to keep track of when my sites get updated in Google.
For every site that I have, I create two alerts: one for site:www.URL.com and link:www.URL.com. These provides me with emails that let me know when new pages of my sites are index and when new backlinks are found.
The 'site' alert happens in real time as google finds more of my pages, but the 'link' alert only happens when Google exports its backlinks. The good thing about that is that I know when Google has begun an update when I start receiving the 'link' alerts for my sites.
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