Google Alerts for my name: a founder's setup for name and company mentions

To set up Google Alerts for my name, the short version is: open google.com/alerts, type your full name inside quotation marks, pick your options and click Create Alert, and Google emails you whenever new search results mention you. A founder should build a small set of these, for themselves, the company and the product, and add an AI monitor such as AyeWatch where plain keyword matching gets noisy.

Why founders watch their own name

Before a first meeting, investors, candidates and customers search for you. A podcast clip, a quote in a trade story, a review of your product or a namesake in the headlines can all come up. It is better to see these first than to hear about them across the table. Use these steps for your own name and your company, not to keep tabs on private individuals.

The starter set of alerts

Create each one at Google Alerts while signed in to the account you read every day.

Under Show options you can also set the sources, the language, the region and which account receives the emails.

Make a name alert precise

Use quotes. Google's search help documents quotation marks for an exact word or phrase, so "Jane Doe" matches the full name instead of every Jane and every Doe.

Add a word that ties it to you. A common name pulls in strangers. Pair it with your company, your city or your field.

Drop a namesake with a minus sign. If another Jane Doe plays basketball, add -basketball to the query. Google documents the minus sign for excluding a word in Search; try the query before saving, since Google does not say every operator behaves the same inside an alert.

Choose the volume. All results sends more, Only the best results sends less. Start broad for a week, then tighten.

Add Results about you for personal details

Google's Results about you is a separate tool for a different worry: whether your home address, phone number or email address appears in search results. You enter your name and contact details, and Google can notify you by email or in the Google app when results with that information turn up, and again when new ones appear. From there you can ask Google to remove a result. Google says it keeps results it considers valuable to the public, such as news or business sites, and that removal from Search does not delete the page itself. Some features are still rolling out to adults in certain markets.

Where a name alert runs out

A Google Alert reports new Google Search results that contain your words. It does not judge whether a mention matters, it cannot follow one page such as a review listing or a competitor's press room, and Google's help page describes delivery by email only. For a founder with a busy name, that means a full inbox of directory pages and job listings next to the one quote you needed.

AyeWatch for the mentions that matter

AyeWatch lets you brief it the way you would brief an assistant: tell me when Jane Doe or Acme Robotics is quoted in a news story or reviewed, and skip job ads and directory pages. Its AI judges new items by meaning, and each alert comes as a short summary with links to its sources. You can also follow public LinkedIn company and person posts or an X profile, and paste the URL of a review page or a competitor's newsroom to hear when it changes.

Push alerts and the feed are included on every plan, on the web, iOS and Android. Paid plans add email, a daily digest by email, Slack and webhooks, and start at $9 a month. You can start a free preview of AyeWatch without a card.

One honest note: if your name is rare and a weekly heads-up is all you want, Google Alerts on its own is free and enough.