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Software to watch the Web for specific words to appear

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cyberdiva:
I'm wondering whether anyone knows of free or moderately inexpensive software that will watch the Web and let me know whenever a specific word or name or title appears.  I don't want to specify a specific web site; rather, I'd want the software to search the Web and let me know whenever it finds what I've asked for.  I can imagine a number of uses for such a program: watching for mention of a particular piece of software, or a forthcoming film, or anything involving my favorite actor or author.  Or me.  ;D

I thought such programs would be easy to find, but a very quick Google search turned up only Orbiscope, and from what I can tell, I'd have to tell it what web pages to watch.  That's not what I want.  I already own an old copy of Website Watcher, which is fine for monitoring a specific page or pages.  But my problem is that I don't know where the mention will appear.   Does anyone know of software that will do what I want?

KynloStephen66515:
What about Google Alerts?  That monitors for specific words and then e-mails you.

cyberdiva:
Thanks very much, Stephen!  I'm a little reluctant to become even more involved with and dependent on Google, but Google Alerts does seem to be the sort of thing I'm looking for.  Unless there is free or inexpensive software that will do as good a job, I think I'll go with Google Alerts.

barney:
You might also search for copyright software.  It searches for content, in order to notify of sites stealing/copying [your] Web pages, with a focus on marketing content.  But it should work just as well for randomly specified text, e.g., names, phrases.  Have no idea how efficacious it might be  :-\, but I see, at least every two (2) or three (3) months, offers for some version or other of it.

Ath:
And how about mouser's Web Link Captor?

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