It is not always so easy for a company to figure out its own online presence or the one from their competitors.  When building an Online Marketing/PR strategy it is always necessary to know who is talking about you and what they are saying.  It is also important to know who is talking about your competitors and what it is been said.

I recently collaborated in a Digital Footprint study for a well known software company, the study was focused on Mexico and Latin America and it was intended to identify the blogs, sites, and at the end, people, who were talking about the company and its brands.  The results are confidential, but they will enable the company to generate a strategy to start a relationship, or even a direct conversation with them.

The tools we used were almost all from Google, but there are also other online tools out there that can help you figure out what size your (or your competitors’) Digital Footprint is. Bryan Eisenberg compiled last year a set of 14 Tools to Legally Spy On Your Competition:

1. Statbrain – To determine the number of visitors a website has based on an algorithm an different information sources.

2. AideRSS – To find out which blog posts and topics are engaging people.

3. FeedCompare – To compare the size of  your feed to others.

4. Xinu Returns – To get a report on how well a site is doing on popular search engines.

5. Google Trends For Websites – To find how often a set of topics have been searched in Google over time.

For the rest of the list, click here.

It is true that sometimes Google isn’t the best option to find specific content on the web. MakeUseOf published a list of 15 great alternative search engines that will help you search faster and more efficently.

For example:

• MP3Realm- Audio search with streaming and download option.
• TuneFind – Find names of artists/songs appeared on TV shows.
• MuviBee – Music videos finder.
• Cookstr – For recipes and cooking.

To see the complete list click here.