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[empyrean_aisles]

In the "Not Your Father's PhD" column, the author writes:

I have a site meter on my blog, of course, and I get Google alerts, so I know when my name has been Googled by Somecollege.edu. I see the pages you visit and know where you stopped. (I also know what operating system you are using and your longitude and latitude.) So I am watching you, too.

Does anyone know how to do this? It's a little unclear from the article but it seems like he only knows the people who are Googling him *if* they visit his own site (which presumably has a feature which tells him the last page his visitors were on before they went to his site).

EA, technically-challenged and clearly even further behind the web 2.0 curve than she realised

[epistephiliac]

That quote doesn't quite make sense. He can check his server logs to see Google referrals and monitor visitors, yes. But Google Alerts notify you of new content that contains a text string you are interested in following, not of who uses that string to search.

If he is signed up for Google Alerts under his name, that will only tell him when Google crawlers locate a reference to his name somewhere, not whether a school has Googled him.

[bwithrow]

Hi empyrean_aisles and epistephiliac,

The confusion is probably just from my choice of putting those two items so close together. 

The Google alerts tell me when I'm being googled, particularly if I use the "as it happens" function.  The sitemeter can tell me where I'm being Googled from and what search criteria is being used.  I actually have two versions of a sitemeter (a basic one which tells me this) and a more thorough one through my host.  But I can usually see even on the basic one when an edu is searching for me.  The more basic sitemeter will tell me what the entrance page is, the number of pages, the exit page or what link they clicked out to, the time, location, IP address in case, etc.  As in marketing, I use whatever tools I can to determine not only what people are liking on my blog, but what might be happening to me on the career front.  If I submit an application by email (which is becoming more of an option than ever), I can often seen when someone clicked from that email at someschool.edu to my website (usually if they are using Microsoft Exchange or something similar).  For a blogger, these are indispensible tools for improving a blog.

[epistephiliac]

The Google alerts tell me when I'm being googled, particularly if I use the "as it happens" function. 

This is the part that confuses me. I use Google Alerts quite a lot in both my research and consulting, and as far as I know, the service only reports finds, not searches. In other words, it won't tell you if someone has run a search on your name, but only if someone has created a page that includes your name.

As an experiment, this morning I set up a Google Alert for my name, set to "as it happens," and have run about 20 searches for myself (I feel very narcissistic). I haven't received any alerts, and I'll be very surprised if I do.

[larryc]

Could someone link the column under discussion?

[hollow_man]

http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2008/04/2008041501c/careers.html?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

[bwithrow]

Perhaps it has changed.  It seems to me that when I signed up (when it was in beta), they billed it as being connected to searches and posts as they happened.  I know that I get alerts for pages and posts that I know have been around for a while, not just new pages.  I think an alert is triggered when a result is moved within the top ten or twenty of a web search (and it varies depending upon groups or blogs).  When the search results change (as a result of new posts or the position of old posts), a new alert is triggered, which I believe is why it is connected to active searching.  Active searching results in re-indexing (unless I'm mistaken). 

I find them most helpful when an article or book I've written is being talked about.  So, that falls more in the category you are describing.  It is not as helpful as a sitemeter in determinig specific searches though.

[larryc]

Thanks Wasteland.

I think what the author means is that he uses a site tracker program to see who came to his blog via a Google search. This is easy to do. I regularly see that people came to my blog by googling my name. With a few clicks I can get their IP address and see their rough location on a map.

However, I only know this for people who searched for me and then clicked on a link to my blog. It does not tell me about people who googled my name in general.

In other news--why is the Chronicle printing job search advice from someone who has not found a job? And such confident advice!

[hollow_man]

In other news--why is the Chronicle printing job search advice from someone who has not found a job?

Ouch, larryc!

[epistephiliac]

Perhaps it has changed.  It seems to me that when I signed up (when it was in beta), they billed it as being connected to searches and posts as they happened.  I know that I get alerts for pages and posts that I know have been around for a while, not just new pages.  I think an alert is triggered when a result is moved within the top ten or twenty of a web search (and it varies depending upon groups or blogs).  When the search results change (as a result of new posts or the position of old posts), a new alert is triggered, which I believe is why it is connected to active searching.  Active searching results in re-indexing (unless I'm mistaken). 

They have changed their algorithms several times since I first started using them, about three years ago. They now index a much wider range of material, and I think changes in hierarchy or updates do indeed trigger an alert, although since the system is proprietary  I'm not certain what sort of thresholds they use. But regardless, all you get from a Google Alert is a link to your own page, with nothing linking to the person or even location of origin of any search requests. A Google Alert is useful for letting you know where else people are talking about you, but it seems unlikely that search committees would post publicly about candidates.

I find them most helpful when an article or book I've written is being talked about.  So, that falls more in the category you are describing.  It is not as helpful as a sitemeter in determinig specific searches though.

Yes.

I think what the author means is that he uses a site tracker program to see who came to his blog via a Google search. This is easy to do. I regularly see that people came to my blog by googling my name. With a few clicks I can get their IP address and see their rough location on a map.

Oh, definitely, but that has nothing to do with Google Alerts, which was the part I found confusing.

In other news--why is the Chronicle printing job search advice from someone who has not found a job? And such confident advice!

I'm guessing he is one of this year's crop of people assigned to chronicle their job market experiences. For what it's worth, my (probably too extensive by some measures) web presence did nothing to interfere with my job search, although I recognize that my field is quite different from the author's.

[empyrean_aisles]

This is the part that confuses me. I use Google Alerts quite a lot in both my research and consulting, and as far as I know, the service only reports finds, not searches. In other words, it won't tell you if someone has run a search on your name, but only if someone has created a page that includes your name.

Yes, this is exactly what confused me - I too use Google Alerts and have never received information about the searches people are doing. Glad to find I'm not the only one who couldn't figure it out.

[larryc]

In other news--why is the Chronicle printing job search advice from someone who has not found a job?

Ouch, larryc!

I don't mean it as a slam on the author, who seems bright and to be doing the right things to find a job. But the Chronicle should not be assigning articles on job hunting tips to those who have not concluded a successful job hunt. And the author should have had the good sense to refuse to write such an article. Especially since some of the technical statements in the article are proving to be incorrect.

[bigdaddyprof]

Larryc, et. al,

Just a thought: I think that someone going through a process, even though that process has not yet successfully concluded, can have salient wisdom about that process worth sharing. Granted, the ultimate credential is the closure of a search with job in hand. However, I would personally not want to dismiss the author's insights out of hand. Otherwise, if you look at the non-rants on the job-hunt section, nobody would have much worth sharing. There's more commentary at my blog, which doesn't actually exist.

Hoo-ha,
aa

In other news--why is the Chronicle printing job search advice from someone who has not found a job?

Ouch, larryc!

I don't mean it as a slam on the author, who seems bright and to be doing the right things to find a job. But the Chronicle should not be assigning articles on job hunting tips to those who have not concluded a successful job hunt. And the author should have had the good sense to refuse to write such an article. Especially since some of the technical statements in the article are proving to be incorrect.

[bwithrow]

Hi Larry,

I'm the author of the article. Just for clarification, as I mentioned in my above comments, the only hiccup or confusion that I see in what I said is concerning how a Google Alert is triggered.  When I started using it in beta, I understood there to be a relationship between search activity, frequency of indexing, and the triggered alerts themselves.  This would then be the reason why some older pages are brought up though nothing about them has changed, except that perhaps some searching triggered them to now be within the top 10-20 results.  One comment above says that the algorithms have changed several times now and that it may work differently as a result. 

Perhaps the article can be amended to avoid unnecessary bumps in a needed conversation about what I think is a helpful subject, that is, the blogging itself.

Admittedly, I could have drawn a sharper line in that article on the difference of use between my sitemeter and Google alerts.  A sitemeter does exactly what I say though, in terms of the domain of the visitor, pages visted, etc.  For example, a visitor this morning from Southeastern Louisiana University came to my site by searching Google for "Brandon G. Withrow." 

Also, on your other point about job advice.  I appreciate your concern about getting good advice.  Please note that part of my article is about how some of my current adjunct work (the place where most of us start before we get the full-time position) was a result of my blogging experience.  That, I felt shows the need to be open to new uses of technology, especially for teaching distance ed or in the use of research databases (OCLC, JSTOR, etc).  I have also understood the First Person column to be described as "Academics share their personal experiences," and this article is meant to do that.  I think it is helpful to discuss the issue in this way, and based on the positive responses I'm getting via email, I think others are wanting to raise this subject as well.   This thread would be a good place to have that discussion.

If you blog, have you had any bad experiences in the job search as a result? 

I would also be interested in hearing from anyone that has been on a search committee and had candidates that blog.  How do you view them? 

[watermarkup]

I blog under my real name on a similar set of topics as Brandon Withrow. I think he gives good advice about blogging while being on the market. In my case, there are conversations I wished to participate in that were inseparable from my real-world identity, including my academic identity. For me, starting to blog was part and parcel of no longer putting important parts of my life on hold while waiting for a tenure-track job to materialize, or not. Like Brandon, I try to be positive, reasonable, and interesting online.

For what it's worth, I had a higher response rate to my applications this year than ever before (over 1 in 3, compared to 1 in 6 or so in earlier years, based on an average of 35 applications a year in an MLA field). It probably had much more to do with the content of my CV than with anything else, including blogging. Then again, I haven't found a tenure-track job yet, so look at this more as a reflection on my own experience, rather than as advice to anyone else.