Google alerts. How to tame Google Alerts, or the ideal “alarm clock” for business

Greetings! I would like to introduce you to one of Google’s services, which many people have heard of, but the possibilities of its use often remain underestimated. We are talking about easy to use, but at the same time sufficient powerful tool Google Alerts or Google Alert and I. Proper Use this application will not only help you keep abreast of events that interest you, but can also become effective assistant to your business.

So, Google Alerts: what is it, how does it work, who can be useful and how to make working with it as productive as possible? All this is discussed in today’s article. We will also find out whether there are analogues for Google Alerts, but first things first.

How Google Alerts works: overview of functionality

Google Alerts is an online alert service from the search engine of the same name, which invites its users to “keep an eye on everything new and interesting” for them on the Internet. By the way, the application is completely free. To use it, just go to https://www.google.ru/alerts and log in. To do this you will need a Google account. If you don't already have one, just register your email in Gmail and one will be created automatically.

With the help of Google Alerts, we can instantly receive information that appears on the network for the request we need, which has been indexed by Google. Unlike Yandex, the Google search bot collects and sends all content for indexing without resorting to any filtering. Consequently, the options offered to us by the Alerts service in response to given condition searches may be very numerous and not the most “selected” in the context of relevance. But the quality of the list of web resources received can be controlled. As well as many other functions. I suggest you learn how to set up Google Alerts in order to get the necessary return from the service.

The application interface is concise and understandable. The first thing we see is the “Create alert” line, where you need to enter a request. Below is your online data: account and email. There is a plus sign next to each of them; by clicking on it, this data will be processed as a request.

Let's assume that we are learning the Bootstrap framework on our own. We want to receive information about emerging lessons on the Internet, webinars, videos, and discussions on forums. We enter our request “Bootstrap lessons” in the appropriate field. The “Create alert” and “More options” buttons appear immediately below the line. Below them, in the “Preview” block, are previously found results that might be suitable. This is a kind of example of the format in which we will receive a report on search results.

Let's take a closer look at what's behind the options button.

When clicked, a drop-down list opens with a list of customizable Google Alerts functionality:

Sending frequency. This item provides 3 options: “As results appear”, “No more often than once a day”, “No more often than once a week”. Select the optimal frequency for receiving reports, depending on the purpose you are pursuing when creating specific request. If you expect an immediate response to the information received or it is important for you to “catch” the expected event in real time, choose the first option. Examples of such cases, as well as recommendations on how to use Google Alerts, will be given below. Be careful if the request is high in frequency, there is a risk of being inundated with a huge number of messages.

If your request is more general plan and a summary for a certain period of time is enough for you; daily or even weekly alerts will be more convenient. In this case, you will receive messages with information that has appeared on the Internet in the last 24 hours or 7 days, respectively.

Sources. Here the service provides us with the opportunity to detail the area of information search, thereby specifying the type of content. You can only track what's new in blog posts, or in video format, or in comments. The entire list of available options looks like this: auto-select, news, blogs, Internet, video, books, discussions, finance.
Language, country. We establish which state the web resources that post the data we need should belong to, and in what language we want to see the publications. It is logical that if you want to receive information on some issue from Tunisian news sites, there is hardly any point in choosing the Russian language. I note that the choice of both languages and countries is quite large.
Quantity. This item designed to manage the quality of content provided by Google Alerts, and as a result, the quantity. There are 2 options available: “All results” and “Only best results" The first name speaks for itself. If you want alerts to contain only information from “reliable” sources selected according to criteria Google quality, you should give preference to the second option. In this case, your search results will probably not include mentions from small, non-indexed Internet resources.
Delivery. You can receive alerts either to your email.gmail or in RSS feed format. Please note, specify arbitrary mailbox you have no right. The application automatically assigns the email with which you logged in to Google.

While working with the settings, examples of notifications from “ Preview» will change depending on the options you select.

Having set the necessary parameters, click “Create alert”. Now we can manage our alerts in the “My Alerts” block. Opposite each of our requests there are 2 buttons: for editing (pencil icon) and for deleting (trash icon). In addition, we can configure the receipt of reports itself, or more precisely: the time of their delivery and the summary format (i.e., when all alerts are sent in one email). To do this, click on the gear icon next to the name “My Alerts”.

Perhaps this is all we need to know about how to set up Google Alerts.

The service allows you to create up to 1000 requests. Let's find out when Google Alerts can come in handy and how to use this tool to utilize its full potential constructively.

Using Google Alerts in practice

Let's start with what it was originally invented for. this service. If you are interested in any issue or have a hobby, then you probably know how much time it takes to monitor information on the right topic. With Google Alerts, you only need to create a request once, and you can regularly receive the latest data and keep your finger on the pulse of what's happening. This saves your time.

Google Alerts can be an indispensable assistant in tracking last-minute tours, discounts, sales, promotions, promo codes - all types of offers that are valid only for a limited period of time or have a limited quantity. Just select the sending frequency “As results arrive” in the settings.

You can even use the capabilities of the Alerts service to search for a job. For example, let’s create a request “Moscow seo vacancy”.

Now you will have access to the most up-to-date information on this issue on the Internet.

If you want to narrow your search to a specific source, detail the alert: Vedic recipes site:youtube.com, where after “site” you can insert the name of the site you are interested in.

Here, I think, everything is clear. Now let's look at how this Google Alerts functionality can be applied in business and promotion.

Using queries, you can track all mentions on the Internet related to your name/brand/organization/project. Why is this necessary?

For reputation management. Let's imagine a situation: your business achieves some success and competitors begin to make attempts to ruin your reputation. In the context of our example, we are talking about a number of negative publications about your company that they posted on the RuNet. Articles are well optimized and appear in the TOP search results by the name of your organization. Thanks to Google Alerts, you will be able to see this in time, and the situation can be taken under control. You will have time to take measures to ensure that your name does not suffer: publish a series of your articles and promote them in such a way that they displace negative links from competitors from the first pages in search engines.

It is also possible that an online store confuses the address and delivers incorrectly. A dissatisfied client posts a negative review on a specialized website or forum. I think it’s obvious to everyone how important it is in such a situation to respond quickly and write a meaningful response.

If you are a blogger, then having learned that the name of your project was mentioned on some web resource, you have the opportunity to negotiate with the webmaster to place a link to your site. Since the author has already talked about you, most likely he is loyal to your project and will not refuse.
If you are an information businessman, then Google Alerts gives you the opportunity to monitor the illegal distribution of information products on file hosting services and torrents. Also, when discussions that are relevant to you appear on the forums, you will be able to promptly join the discussion, answer a question about the product, or provide clarification.

The service can be used to monitor competitors. Create a query using their titles or names. If you see a negative review about their activities online, take the opportunity and make the user a more profitable and high-quality offer.

Use Google Alerts to set up notifications about mentions of your project on social networks. Perhaps you are promoting on social networks, then you need to insure yourself against such unpleasant moments as, for example, a negative mention by a famous blogger. Or, by analyzing social signals, you can get an idea of what content is more preferable to target audience. For this purpose, create an alert in the following format:

website (site:facebook.com OR site:twitter.com OR site:plus.google.com OR site:vk.com),

where in curly braces indicate your preferred social networks, separating them with the logical operator “or” (“OR”). Here and further in the examples, the name of my blog should be replaced with yours.

To promote an Internet project, it will certainly be useful to follow the placement on third party resources new backlinks to your site. Of course, the role of backlinks is important to increase the trust of a blog and its thematic index citations. But here are low-quality sources reference mass can damage the ranking of your web resource and lead to being caught by search engine filters. Therefore, it is so important to neutralize in a timely manner if the pages from which they come do not fall under.

To create this type of alert from Google Alerts, enter the following type of construction into the search bar:

https://site/ -site:site,

where the expression “- site:site” will exclude new pages of your own resource from being included in the results.

In several cases, it may be useful to select a blog as a source of information on the desired topic when setting up an alert. Monitoring new publications has undeniable advantages:

it is a stable source of up-to-date information and new topics for your own articles;
these are potential sites for placing backlinks;
this is an opportunity to be the first to write a comment with an indexed link on a dofollow blog (a blog where for indexing search robots Links left when commenting are open).

Google Alerts can serve you as an additional tool against spam:

poker OR casino OR porn OR sex OR pharmacy site:site,

where you need to list stop words that characterize spam. Typically, webmasters form their list empirically.

Another non-trivial way Google applications Alerts are searching and attracting new clients. Let's say you are the owner of a pet store in Irkutsk. Then a number of alerts will suit you, such as: “buy a collar * Irkutsk”, “Irkutsk buy a collar”, “* collar * Irkutsk”, etc. When will you see that potential client is looking for a product related to your field of activity, you can quickly respond: give recommendations as an expert, answer the question and add a link to your resource.

Have you ever come across an interesting web resource that does not provide the opportunity to subscribe to its newsletter? Create a request:

site:klassniysite.ru –

and you will always know about new publications.

If you are not too lazy, you can even turn Google Alerts into an anti-plagiarism tool. It is enough to generate an alert from a unique line of your article. Of course, this is a very time-consuming option if your blog posts regularly large number material, but perhaps it will come in handy.

Here are the main ways to use the Google Alerts app. But you can come up with your own new options for using the service and share them in the comments!

How to generate alerts: operators

The more precise the request, the more specific its wording, the more useful it will be for you. incoming notifications from Google Alerts. As you have already noticed from the examples given in the article, special operators can help us achieve maximum effect in searching for information:

“” “” (quotes) - a search for an expression enclosed in quotes will be carried out in strict compliance with the sequence of words and exact match word forms;
“+” (plus) is a sign placed before a word, without a space (this is prerequisite), denotes a command to search for a word in its original form, i.e. repeats the function of quotes;
“-” (minus) – indicates that the word it precedes should be excluded from the search. For example: “online store zoomir-tula”. What does it mean: mentions of this store in connection with the city of Tula will not be included in the selection results;
“site” - allows you to narrow the search for information to a specific site or domain zone: “Silver Age of Poetry site:poesy.com” or “Silver Age of Poetry site:.ru”;
"OR" ( logical operator OR) – registered in capital letters as a separator between listed words, forms a search condition for any of the options. Without using “OR”, only those mentions will be selected that involve all of the spelled words at the same time.
“*” (asterisk) – replacement of a word in the notification.

Services like Google Alerts

Many, faced with the application we are talking about today, want to find out if Google Alerts has analogues in Yandex. Unfortunately, the most popular Runet search engine can only offer us a service vaguely reminiscent of Google Alerts. This is Yandex. Blogs located at yandex.ru/blogs. This tool can help you track brand mentions in social media. The principle of operation is very simple - enter a query into the search bar and get links.

In addition to this application, of course, there are a large number of paid and shareware services for collecting data on mentions in the media, blogs, and social networks. They are distinguished by a more flexible system of settings, the function of exporting search results to various formats, the ability to analyze and evaluate the information received. Similar programs include: IQBazz, Kribrum, Wobot, YouScan, TalkWalker, BrandsEye, Babkee. The listed applications have user-friendly interface, technical support service, provide expert advice. They have every reason to become useful tool in effective reputation management and marketing research.

If you need deeper monitoring of the popularity of your project and want to get an analysis of all kinds of Internet resources around the world, use Google Alerts analogues such as Mention or ContentGems.

Functionality of the English-language service MOZ Open Site Explorer will be useful if you want to analyze web resources linking to your site. The service will display the page link, anchor text and donor spam. Various filters will help you generate the most useful report on the results.

As you can see, Google Alerts is not inferior to its analogues in terms of functionality, even though they are paid. Therefore, the Alerts service can definitely be recommended as great tool For operational tracking on the web for up-to-date information on an issue of interest, for SEO optimization and project promotion, for brand reputation management and no-budget marketing.

And here is a video for a visual introduction to Google Alerts:

With huge potential. However, you should learn how to use it correctly to solve various tasks. Today we will look at the operating principle of this device using examples.

Briefly about the possibilities

The Google.com Alerts service allows you to various actions, among them: prompt detection of plagiarism, monitoring backlinks, tracking social signals, searching for spam.

Why did Google have this tool?

The resource has gone far beyond the search engine. At the same time, Google collects most of the information about its own users from its proprietary browser, as well as the Android mobile OS. Essentially, we are dealing with the largest analytics company in the world. Google Alert is directly related to search. The robot of the system is not very selective. Thus, in search service everything that the special algorithm could recognize is included. The data then goes through the site evaluation stage. The tool we started talking about today will help you figure it all out.

Google Alerts: what is it and how to use it

In fact, before us is a search add-on that allows you to instantly track the occurrence of information of interest to the user throughout the Internet, or on a specific resource. The tool informs you about all the new products that enter the search engine index. Google Alert also allows you to use operators. To work, you need an account that is common for all company services. For example, if you need to spend your vacation as economically as possible, notifications about the availability of hot tours are suitable. You can also use a number additional settings using the "More Options" function.

The “Sending frequency” item is responsible for the schedule for receiving letters with news from the system. It's not always convenient to receive notifications every time results appear. Well proven daily reports. The “Sources” option allows you to select the type of content from which you will search for information on the topic of interest. For example, the appearance of a new video, blog post or book on the desired topic.

If you need to track recordings only in YouTube, this can be done by adding a special Site operator to the entered request. “Language, Country” - select these parameters so that only those resources are tracked, information from which can be read without using dictionaries.

The Quality option allows you to ask Google tool Send Alerts new information, obtained only from trusted resources or from all. “Delivery” - you can select the option to receive news on the desired topic. It's about the address email in the RSS feed. After completing the settings, click “Create Alert”. You can proceed to compiling the next request. In total, one account can have up to 1000 such applications. Buttons for editing and deleting advertisements are located from them right side. Thanks to the service, developers of virtual resources can receive information about new links on the Internet that lead to their sites. You can also track mentions of your own project on pages social networks.

Alas, this method will stop working on June 27, 2015, because... Google is disabling SMS notifications for calendar.
support.google.com/calendar/answer/45351?hl=ru

Important! SMS notifications will be disabled on June 27
As of June 27, 2015, you will no longer receive SMS alerts from Google Calendar. The SMS alert feature was introduced even before the widespread use of smartphones. However, modern mobile devices allow you to receive notifications in a more convenient format and even offline.
To view alerts, you can use the calendar application that was installed on your smartphone by default, or download Google Calendar for Android or iPhone. Learn more about alerts.
Note. This change will not affect users Google Apps for Work, Education and Government.

The principle of operation is as follows: the script checks the “Inbox” folder in the mailbox using a timer and if it detects new letters, it creates them in Google calendar event with a name as the subject of the letter, and includes an SMS notification for it. As a result you get SMS message the following content:

Reminder: Subject @ date and time

The next few steps must be completed so that the script can process new mail correctly.

Step 2: Create a filter that will apply the SMSnotify label to all incoming messages (To:<ваше-имя>@gmail.com). How to do this is written here – Using filters:
support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=ru&hlrm=ru&answer=6579#0
So everything new emails will be marked with this label.

Step 3: Sign in Google Drive(or Docs if you haven't switched yet) and create a new one spreadsheet(Spreadsheet). Open the created table and top menu select Tools > Script Editor.

Step 4: Due to the fact that when setting notifications directly from code, errors like

Calendar: Mismatch: etags

You need to create an additional calendar and customize SMS notifications: set as default for all new meetings like this:

Settings->Calendars->Notifications->Default->SMS->%% min

In this example, the name of the calendar would be " email"

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that now you can create scripts from the Google Drive interface like individual applications, not embedded in the table. So " Step 3" can now be reduced to the following:

Will open new page with Google’s “script-IDE”, this is where the fun begins.

The full text of the code is under the spoiler

Click this to show/hide the code

function my_notification() ( var calendar = CalendarApp.getOwnedCalendarsByName("email"); //open the calendar with the name "email" var threads = GmailApp.getUserLabelByName("SMSnotify").getThreads(); //variable in which the collection is stored threads with the SMSnotify label var now = new Date(); if(threads == 0) return; // stop execution if there are no new threads for(i in threads) // create events ( calendar.createEvent(threads[i]. getFirstMessageSubject(), new Date(now.getTime()+60000), new Date(now.getTime()+60000) ) GmailApp.getUserLabelByName("SMSnotify").removeFromThreads(threads); //remove labels "SMSnotify" "from chains)

After you have entered the code, you need to create a trigger that will run the script. To do this, click on the menu " Resources", and in it on " Triggers of the current script".

We need time-driven trigger with a repetition frequency, for example, one hour.

In the process of changing trigger conditions or saving changes in the script itself, an authorization window will appear. Feel free to authorize :)

After all the manipulations, as a test, we try to run the script for execution.

Sometimes you may receive messages about unsuccessful script execution (even if the code is correct and everything worked before). These messages can be disabled (although I left them): you need to click on “notifications” in the trigger editor window and this window will appear

Thank you for reading to the end, I hope I didn’t forget anything. I will be very glad if this is useful to someone.
Any comments, additions, criticism are welcome! Just recently discovered this wonderful

Published: 06/06/2015 13:40

Not many of you know that Google has such an interesting service as Google Alerts. Today, with its help, we can very quickly promote our favorite blog. Let's go...

Google Alerts - a goldmine for bloggers

Greetings, my dear readers. Today I’ll tell you a little about how you can quickly promote your portal, or rather blog, with the help of a good service Google Alerts. Let's figure out how you can quickly promote a portal and start earning money. I’ll try to go through the steps from the birth of an idea to monetization. Let's go!

1. Find the right area

Our main goal is to push the goods. To do this, look for the areas of activity that interest you most, where you can sell any product. Here you can buy cars, pills, intimate goods, books and so on. Today, you can sell any product on the Internet, as long as as many beautiful words, excellent reviews and colorful images as possible are written about it. I would advise taking the spheres with the largest selection. To me, it's like diet pills or something like that. But everything is at your discretion. By the way, I would recommend selecting products using the same advertising exchanges, like admitad.com, gameleads.ru and other platforms.

2. Create a preview blog ( blog reviewer, observation deck)

Choose beautiful things domain name under the type of product. If these are books, then there must be a word book and so on in the same style. For Runet we take .ru, and for a foreign visitor - .com. Everything is natural and simple.

Use a regular CMS ( Joomla or Wordpress), create 10-20 pages with a focus on reviewing a product. Try to make each page a landing page. I wrote about this in this article - We create and promote a landing page in a few weeks. The design and how well the review is written is very influential here. You can try to write a review from some non-existent company ( oh how bad it is to deceive users, don’t tell anyone that it’s me who teaches you this). The review should have graphs, a bunch of fancy words and a table of various Before - After indicators, or something like that. People are incredibly influenced by all these designer fluff, beautiful words about a long life, a sculpted torso, or utter wealth.

3. Configure Google Alerts according to the specified criteria:

By the name of the selected product, item. Each individual product needs to be considered. I would advise starting with 20-30 pieces.
Niche in question.
Competitors' products.
Some third party products that are relevant enough.

4. Constant monitoring

Every day go to Alerts and check new messages and messages. The speed of response to messages will determine how quickly you can attract an audience to your website.

If the niche is popular, there may be 100 or more messages per day. This is very good on the one hand, but also bad on the other ( healthy competition). If there are too few alerts, then you need to add a couple more products, or return to the first point and rethink the scope of your portal.

5. Visit every URL yourself

As soon as you receive a new event, immediately go to the page and comment on it. try to be the very first commentator in order to get as many visitors as possible to your landing page. The text of the comment is the main part that should stimulate the transition as ordinary person, and force the moderator not to delete the comment. Don't just write Visit my site XXX. Better something like this - I constantly visit the XXX site before I buy this product. I hope that the idea will be understood by you. write as detailed as possible, put in a little soul and inspiration.

With the proper approach, each such answer will attract several target users per day. This is a one-time effect. Over time, mid and low frequency queries will rise due to the resulting link mass, which will lead to natural search traffic.

Google Alerts is a content detection service based on search queries user, suggested by the search engine Google system. The service sends emails to the user when new results are received for his queries. In 2003 year Google triggered these alerts.

Despite the information Google messages that this system is not functioning properly and has some problems, this service is still working and fully accessible worldwide. Google Alerts encountered critical issues performance and temporary unavailability on a regional basis, but technical Google support successfully responded to user messages on the official forum.

But be that as it may, Alert good tool to monitor your business. Alerts can give you a lot useful information- free and with minimal effort.

Where to start

And to do that, we need to start by asking why you want to use Google Alerts. Even though many users strongly believe that Google Alerts are not enough for business monitoring, there are good reasons to use this tool.

Here are just a few of them:

Completely free.
Quick to set up.
You can use it to complement other programs.

In other words, you can not only try this tool, but also use it on an equal basis with others.

What are your goals? Google Alerts (program) is an indispensable free tool for any marketing strategy on initial stage any business. To get started, you need minimal knowledge of your industry and there is absolutely no need to pay for this tool. Subsequently, you can always switch to more flexible paid platforms.

Operating principle

The biggest reason any media monitoring strategy fails is that people don't know what they want to achieve. They simply type a few keywords - their brand name or given name, and then hope to find something amazing, but that doesn't happen.

Or another situation that occurs very often is that users entered a different email when creating an alert or forgot to confirm the message that came to them, which read: “Google Alerts, we have received a request to send.” As a result of such situations, no notifications were received.

This tool does not work, many users say after trying it. But where does this opinion come from? Let's understand the situation. Based on the above, many users try to use this tool as a kind of magic wand, thinking that if they use it and enter the name of their brand or company, it will give them everything weak points in their company.

But this is far from true. To find out the effectiveness of Alert and start using it, you need to accurately set your goals. First, you need to figure out what you want from Google and what you hope to achieve based on which users are leaving reviews. Google Alerts may include the following purposes:

Observation of negative reviews about your company in order to respond quickly to them.
Keep track of what major blogs and news sites are talking or writing about you.
Tracking new key conditions in your industry to look for change.
Searching for new blogs for your publications.

Before you start working with this service, you need to set your realistic goals, which you can monitor using Alert. Google Alerts are designed to help you achieve your goals.

What can you expect from your alerts?

Simple keyword control. You will be able to track any keyword in the sources that Google tracks. This could be blogs, forums, news sites or the wider network. It also includes YouTube since Google owns that platform.

Mentions are delivered to your inbox as an email from Google Alerts. GA will send every mention of these keywords to your inbox. You can also view them at google.com/alerts at any time.

Google allows you to choose the time speed at which you will receive them.

One option is to receive them as they come. Therefore, as soon as your keywords will be mentioned on the Internet, you will be notified (by email).
You can also choose to receive all your mentions once a day
Or you can receive notifications once a week.

For a free service this is very good.

What won't you get?

You won't get results from social media. If you want to know what people are saying about you on social media, you need a tool to social marketing. And considering how important social media marketing has become, this could definitely be important to you.
You also won't receive analytics reports or statistics. In fact, these are very simple alerts that do not have any platform for collection statistical information. This is normal for basic campaigns. But it's not ideal if you want to know how often you're mentioned, whether that number is increasing or a whole series other interesting data on analytical information for monitoring. But for these purposes there are other services - more flexible, which have one small drawback - they are paid.

Now, without unnecessary words, let's set up these alerts.

How to set up Google alerts

Creating useful Google alerts is easy. Here's how it works:

Go to google.com/alerts. Make sure you are logged in with account Google you want to use. Select the keywords you want to monitor and try to make them unique.
Specify how often you would like to receive notifications. If you want to receive real-time notifications, select "As results come in." There are also other ways to set the frequency of receipt: “Once a day” or “Once a week”.
Select sources from the dropdown list. Google Alerts don't extend to social media, but you can choose whether to monitor news, blogs, videos, or even books.
Select a language. You will be able to select one specific language to monitor or all languages.
Select your region. If your brand or company is only present in certain countries or if you are expanding into new markets - this tool can be very valuable to monitor.
Select the number of results "Only the best" or "All results". In other words, do you want every mention of your keywords sent to you, or do you let Google pick the most important ones?
Select an email address for delivery. This will be the one you are logged into, but you can send your alerts to an RSS feed if you prefer.
Click Create Alert. That's it.

You will then receive an email to confirm your alerts. This is very easy to do, just open the letter and click on the link - Verify this Google Alerts request, which will be located opposite the request for which you created an alert. This inscription means that you need to check this request through Google to see if you really created this alert.

Again, one of the key Google benefits Alerts is how easy it is to create requests.

If you change your alert criteria or simply don't want to receive newsletters, you can always find out how to turn off Google Alerts. To do this, you just need to open one of the letters sent to you by email, and at the end of the letter click on the “Unsubscribe” link. After this, you will no longer receive notification emails from Google.

Please note that next to the “Unsubscribe” button there is also a link “View all your alerts”, by clicking on which you can view all your alerts, as well as edit them or delete unnecessary ones.

How to make them more effective

Even if queries are easy to set up, mistakes can still be made. So here are some tips to think about before you create alerts.

Avoid generic keywords. There is an opinion, especially at the initial stage of using this service, that the more requests you create, the better. But that's not true. Select only queries that are truly important to you. Because if you create a lot of requests, you will receive a lot of unnecessary notifications, which, in the end, you will delete without even reading them.
Even if your brand is unique, you might want to create a few generic alerts to track mentions in your industry—for example, “shoes” or “accounting.”

Follow these tips:

Too many mentions are about as useful as none at all. In this case, get ready to receive emails from Google Alerts in your inbox. a huge number, and you will realize one day that you are deleting them without even reading them.
Stick to specific, precise keywords that you know will always be relevant to you.
Make a few. Remember that there is a request limit of 1000 per person (if you are using a gmail address).

Let's say you want to monitor negative comments about your company. You can create a custom alert for your business name along with specific negative words:

“My brand” + bad;
“My brand” + poor quality;
“My brand” + worst;

You'll receive specific notifications about your company that will help you identify the problems you need to solve.

Have you ever used more than just the basic Google search when searching for information? There are several commands you can use to make your searches more interesting and accurate.

For example, use speech tags to search for specific phrases and then combine them with other keywords.

If you conclude the necessary key phrase in quotes, then your alert will return results containing this exact phrase, as well as the other word you included in quotes.

Here's a creative guide to making your Google Alerts more impactful, with some ideas:

Use filters where possible. While Google Alerts are far from perfect, they do offer little extras to help you narrow your search. So why not benefit from this for yourself? Let's say you're trying to get traffic to your site, but you want to find guest blogging opportunities. Try creating alerts using phrases like “write for us” or “how to contribute,” and then limit alerts to blogs. You will delete a lot unnecessary information and you will be notified when new additions become available.
You can do the same for certain languages you write in, or even in certain places, if your content has information for local users.
Remember why you created the alerts. This is just a reminder to keep your goals in mind when setting up your notifications. As long as you have a plan, you follow it.

These are just a few simple ways get more information from your alerts.

But are Google Alerts enough for you?

As we've seen, Google Alerts are easy to customize, they allow you to experiment, and you can have essentially as many alerts as you want. The main thing at the initial stage is not to forget to confirm the notifications that will come to your email marked click to confirm your google alert, don’t be alarmed that it’s not in Russian. This phrase means that you need to click on the link to confirm the Google alert.

All Google alerts miss a lot of data and don't allow you to fine-tune your monitoring. Even for sources you think Google would track well, like websites and blogs. But at the same time, do not forget that this service is completely free.

Plus, you really can't afford to ignore social media. Especially if you work with a thriving online community. More than 60% of all users use social networks to rate companies and write various reviews about them. These are your customers, your clients and your prospects. If you don't know what they say about you, it's much harder to target them.

This is why many companies choose tools that combine Google sources Alerts with all major social networks. Such additional tools together with alerts, they can give you deep analytics about sales dynamics, sentiment around your brand, and much more.

So, let's summarize what has been written. Google Alerts is a great tool for those who want a constant stream of user criticism tailored to their industry or business needs.

This tool is also ideal for social media monitoring and event tracking. However, many people feel that it leaves much to be desired in design and functionality. Luckily, Google Alerts are not the only option of this kind.

If Google Alerts doesn't quite suit your business needs, or you just want to see if one of its competitors is a good fit, here's a Google Alerts alternative for comparison.

Talkwalker Alerts

Talkwalker Alerts allow you to monitor internet access for new content featuring your name or brand, your competitors or other important information for your business. It takes mentions from websites, forums, blogs and social networks and delivers them directly to your inbox in one relevant email.

If you want to refine your alerts, you can use the intuitive filter option to view only the formats that are most important to you and your business. Talkwalker also offers high level settings using different operations. This free service offers the simplicity of original Google Alerts, but with much more functionality.

Spam

But the most problematic area is Google Alerts spam. Fraudsters, who are always looking to stay ahead of new developments, ensure that their links appear in alert results.

Seemingly inserting popular keywords into the titles and pages of their scam sites. Thus, Google user Alerts that want to see, say, something new on the Internet related to online earnings, can receive, in addition to legitimate links to online earnings, and news about them, links to spam or even malicious sites that secretly use the name for attracting potential victims.

What to do in this case? You just need to check the links that came in the letter. This is done by simply hovering your mouse over the link, which appears in the lower left corner of any browser. If, for example, the letter says that the link leads to the Yandex website, but a link is displayed that has nothing to do with Yandex, in this case it is better to refrain from clicking on it.