Google Alerts & Stock Photography

I recently exited 1998 and decided to check out something called ‘the internet’ and this new company called ‘Google’, which doesn’t seem to even be a real word.

One of the fantastic features that Google offers is something called ‘Google Alerts’ whereby you receive an email every time your chosen keywords appear on the searchable web. So I am now delighted whenever ‘shaved alpaca’ chimes into my inbox. Seriously. Do a Google images search on that – they look like Dr Seuss animals.

But I digress.

What I really wanted to say was I actually have a keyword set for “Andrew Rowat” (I know, the vanity of it all), which allows you to see who is saying what about you. Most of the time there is actually dead silence. Which isn’t surprising at all. But occasionally you see links to published works, or people commenting on your photography, or well, blog posts like this.

This morning I received an alert with my name and followed the link to a Time magazine article on the most expensive cities in the world to live. One of my shots from Singapore, which is licensed through Getty, appeared in the article: http://moneyland.time.com/2011/07/14/top-10-most-expensive-cities/photo/3/

So this is all a very long-winded way of saying that using Google Alerts can help you track the life of some of your images and see where they end up. Vanity indeed.