Google Alerts: what it is, how it works, how it is activated

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If you want to know what people say on Google about you or your brand, the solution is Google Alerts. It is a free tool that notifies you via email with those Google results related to your name or brand. Read on and find out what Google Alerts is, how it works, how to activate it, and why it can be helpful.
Google Alerts

What is Google Alerts

Probably, if you need to know what they say about your online reputation, you have already heard about Google Alerts. It is an application, developed by the Mountain View colossus, which allows you to monitor the web and identify the pages that contain specific keywords.
Every time someone mentions the word you entered to be alerted, or the query, the service sends an alert to your email address.

This way, you can stay up-to-date on your favorite topics and get notified when your brand is mentioned on the web ( brand monitoring ). So you can decide, for example, when and how to delete a YouTube video.
It is important to note that the tool retrieves information from websites, blogs, and searches within the Google network. It does not include social networks, forums, deep web and dark web.

The brain behind the application is the Indian engineer Naga Kataru, whose name appears on all three Alerts patents on Google.

On February 2003, Kataru, tired of searching for news about the impending US war with Iraq, decided to develop an application. Purpose: to send email notifications regarding specific keywords. The engineer showed his prototype to Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who immediately loved the idea and launched it in August 2003.

Google Alerts
February 2003. Kataru, tired of searching for news about the impending US war with Iraq, decided to develop an application. Purpose: to send email notifications regarding specific keywords. The engineer showed his prototype to Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page , who immediately loved the idea and launched it in August 2003.

How does it work

Let’s see how Google Alerts works. You can set the following search parameters:

  • Frequency of reception of notices;
  • Typology of the site you want to use as a source;
  • Search language;
  • Region search;
  • Number of results (only the best or all);

     

    I remind you that you can use the application only if you have a Google account. Therefore, in case you do not have it, do what is necessary to create it beforehand. Once registered, connect to the main page of the official website and start configuring your search. Doing so is very simple: in the “Create an alert about” field at the top of the page, type the keyword you want to monitor. For example, your name, your brand, your favorite team, etc.

    Then see the results in the alert preview. If you have not found any results of your interest among the suggestions, create an alert.

    In the picture above, we have set an alert for “midterm elections,”: so we will receive by email the list of results in Google that contains the search “midterm elections”.

Google Alerts
In the example of the photo, we have set an alert for “midterm elections”: so we will receive by email the list of results in Google that contains the search “midterm elections”.

What is it for

The use of Google Alerts implies a series of advantages. For example, it saves you the trouble of searching for topics of interest, but primarily it is very useful for online businesses. The main advantage is monitoring what people are saying about you or your brand on Google.
Therefore, it is a handy tool for companies, professionals, politicians and media. If, for example, Google indexes a link that speaks ill of you or your brand, you can act immediately and find out how to remove content from Google.

How to configure Alerts on Google

Once you enter your search query, Alerts on Google gives you the option to customize the settings to fine-tune the results. To set up Google Alerts, start by selecting how often you want to be notified of new alerts. If you want to receive an urgent alert, choose “when it occurs”; otherwise, it will be sufficient to set it to “at most once a day” or “at most once a week”.

Then indicate whether to show results from all sources or only from specific sources ( Blogs, News, Web, Video, Books, Forums, Finance ). As you can see, Google Alert does not include social media monitoring. Unfortunately, this means eliminating from your monitoring strategy a very useful tool for understanding customer sentiment. At this point, specify the language and region and choose the number of alerts you want to receive. Finally, before confirming by pressing the “Create alert” button, enter the email address you want the alerts to be sent to.
Google Alerts
As you can see, there are no social networks among the research sources.

How to Create an Alert

As you type the keyword you want to track, Google previews the results for your query in the area below the search box in real time. To create Google alerts , once you have configured all the parameters that allow you to customize the results, press the Create Alert button. From now on, whenever Google finds relevant results for your keyword set, it will send you an email alert.

How to Activate the Alert

At this point, you are probably wondering how to activate Alerts in Google. If you are not yet logged into your Google account, enter your email address and password on the login page and click “Next”. You will be redirected to the home page of the service. If you were already logged in, the alert will be created immediately. Therefore, every time Google intercepts a new result regarding the keyword you are interested in, you will receive a warning on your email address. Each alert can be modified at any time: to change the alerts already created, you must access Google Alerts and click on the pencil icon.
Google Alerts
At this point, you can make all the changes you want. If you don’t see the options, click “Show Options” to expand the field and see all the drop-down menus. Once you have made the desired changes, confirm by clicking the “Update Alert button”.

How to Use Alerts on Google

Now that you know how to create alerts, the next step is to understand how to use them. Those who have a Google account can use the alert service to monitor mentions related to an entity. For the same purpose, you can control your name if you have a personal brand. In this sense, Google Alerts is an effective tool to monitor and defend web reputation. It allows you to quickly intervene and handle inappropriate comments, criticisms, or negative comments.

You can also use it to monitor what your competitors are doing. When faced with a new product, do you want to know what content they are publishing or if they are talking about it? Just set the name of your competitors as a search query to stay up-to-date on this situation. Google Alerts is also an excellent tool for content creators. It allows you to discover new trends on a specific topic and get inspired by them to create texts that generate traffic. The options are limitless: new technological advances, news about digital marketing, literature, graphics, videos, etc.

How to disable it

We come to the end of Google Alerts. First of all, we remind you that you are only monitoring the Google network, not including social networks, forums and other search engines such as Bing or Yahoo, Deep Web and Dark Web. In addition, only the results found in the first positions of Google appear. If you want to stop receiving updates related to a query for which you had activated an alert, I will explain step by step how to deactivate Alerts in Google.

To delete already created alerts, log in and click the trash can icon next to the alert you want to delete. Although it is a great free platform, if you want to carry out a full analysis of your web reputation, we invite you to try the demo of the RepUP Monitoring Tool. It is a ReputationUP software that monitors the entire Internet network in real-time.

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