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You just can't hide from Google! I told you there is an answer to the question,
How will I know who has grabbed my button?
My post about turning your button into a free billboard, recommended you place a unique search term in the image 'Alt=' attribute, like "BWS tips button." Google will index those words whenever it crawls any blogs that display your button image! A Google search for those keywords can let you know exactly which blogs are displaying your button.
How to setup the tracking keywords
The 'alt=' attribute is part of any image you add to your site. Normally the alt value is blank, but you should always add a description. The tag stands for "alternative text." If the image fails to load, visitors see the alt value instead. For SEO purposes, the alt value can help bring new visitors just from the image indexing.
The code for our grab button uses this alt value:
<img border="0" src="http://farm4.static ..." alt="BWS tips button"></a>
How to Search for results
- Use Google search
Use google.com to key in the unique keywords "BWS tips button" or whatever you are using for your tracking. Press 'go' to get search results.
The words must be in quotes to find what you want! - Use Google alert
You can also set up a Google Alert and get e-mail alerts whenever someone grabs your button. An alert is simply the relevant Google results based on the parameters you set (see box below). Actually, you see the same results as the Google search, but the email lists only the current time period.
- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
BWS Results
Our search for "BWS tips button" returned 8 pages. Most of them are not displaying our button image 
and may not have left a comment on the post but I can tell they used the tutorial code. That's a good thing, since we want our efforts to be useful. Apparently, they copied the code, changed to their image and blog urls but forgot to change the Alt words! 
So as a public service announcement, these folks need to change their grab box code:
See the full list here --- Results 1 to 73 for "bws tips button" (opens in new window.)
Summary
This tracking works only if the visitor copies tutorial code/html that contains the unique keywords ensuring a Google index. That's very easy with any grab my button scrollbox. But you can embed other words that you want to track within the html that is copied by the reader. For a Blogger Table of Contents tutorial, I gave everyone a paragraph to use, explaining to their visitors how their new table works. When I search on those words, I see who has installed my code!
Normally, post comments are the only way you know someone will use your tutorial code. However, for those shy visitors we now have a tracking tool in our arsenal for the new question:
How will I know who has grabbed my tutorial?
Armed with that list, we can start visiting blogs and making contact. You can't escape now. 
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{ 12 comments }
great post. thank you for sharing!
Hello from Germany! May i quote a post a translated part of your blog with a link to you? I've tried to contact you for the topic Use Google Search to Track Your Tutorial Usage, but i got no answer, please reply when you have a moment, thanks, Sprueche
Hi. sorry you message may have been trapped in spam. Sure, many bloggers quote from other articles as part of their own posts, and use a link back. thanks for asking.
LOL, I didn't know your site existed, I got the information from a friend, but thanks to your incoming link I now know and I removed your information from it. Keep up the good work!
Remember, be careful of accepting images from friends — that's how viruses get started. LOL, just kidding. Apparently you just added a new image on your site with the correct alt tag. But you don't have a scroll box with html for friends to actually put the button on their blogs — see our tutuorial on grab my button, promote my blog
— that reminds me, you might want to add a search box since I remember commenting on the 'help me decide which header design…' post. However, I couldn't find it…. Also your lady bug would make a great favicon instead of the WP symbol!
You've listed a lot of good suggestions, please feel free to come and put all those things into motion for me thus saving me the trouble and could you build me a background and install it too tee hee. We could be BFF's for life! Thanks for all the good information.
LOL, you're welcome. I followed you on Twitter (under my sbanow id) so I can keep an eye on you.
really great post
I need to change the code on my button so I can track how many people have used it – it's on my TO-DO list which is about 2.3 miles long as I type this.
Hi, we missed you! I know you didn't put it at the end of that long list, did you? If so a bump is in order!
Hi there,
That is a very interesting fact. Thanks for sharing this. Is it possible that you can have a small youtube video or something that shows exactly what you do or how you do it, more like a Tutorial.
Cheers,
Eddie Gear
Eddie, I updated the post to show the steps to track and find search results. In a private email you suggested using Adobe Captivate for video tutorials. That type of eLearning software is a bit outside our budget right now. Thanks as always for keeping us on our toes and looking at all possibilities for a better reader experience.