What to do if your bike is stolen

Another way to look for your stolen bike online is to set up a Google Alert with the key phrases your bike might be sold under.

So, if you've lost a green fixed-gear Raleigh with chrome handlebars, you might set up Google Alerts for:

Green + Raleigh + fixed gear

Green + fixed gear + chrome

Raleigh + fixed gear + chrome handlebars

It's worth creating two or three Alerts, including one quite generic, because the thief might not know the correct terms, or he might deliberately write vague descriptions.

Google Alerts will ping all the links to your email, you just need to sort through them.

If your bike is individual enough, you've set the right Alert up, and the thief tries to sell it online (even after months), Google will find it.

It's not fool-proof, but it'll save more time than trawling through all the sites one by one. It also helps if you're outside London and don't have Bikeshd.co.uk to look through (which is a brilliant site).

Hope this helps - if it's old advice then please ignore it. I only found this site (and the "Locks that work" thread) after I had my bike stolen. It was a generic Black Subway Carrera from Halfords, so although I found lots of matches, it's been impossible to work out if any were my bike.

Still, I like my new cheap second-hand bike more.

Would be interested to know if anyone has any success using this method?