17 Dec The myth of the “Google Alert”
I often ask about adoption of certain technologies in my workshops. It’s nice to know which tools are being used; I can often tailor my advice to make the session more relevant.
Of all the online tools I ask about, the uptake is always largest for Google Alerts. People love their Google Alerts. In fact, I think they may love them a little too much.
Here are the three big Google Alert myths I encounter:
- It’s “real time” search
- So good it can replace media monitoring software
- Never misses anything
Don’t get me wrong. I use Alerts. They are useful. Helpful even. But it’s important to note the system is unrefined, often missing data and is only one part of a comprehensive listening program you should be undertaking. If Google Alerts are your primary online listening tool; you are missing information.
This is reality of Google Alerts:
- Real time search was only just included in Google main page results; on average “alerts” for breaking news items show up 10 – 45 minutes earlier on Twitter or monitoring packages/systems
- Media monitoring systems require people to run them; which is why managers often try to find “automated” solutions. Monitoring packages (CNW, MediaMiser, Bowden’s) bring in data and content from non-public, non-Internet sources; paid at a premium – Google Alerts simply can’t match that.
- Google Alerts misses countless items; the better your search query the better the results. The more generic the inquiry; the more generic the results. A better solution is to use the RSS function on Alerts and include it as part of your RSS reader. Also remember that “Alerts” can be set for: Web, Video, News, Blogs and Groups
What are the other Google Alert myths? Have any great tips on leveraging the Alert system for best use? Please take a moment and comment below.
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10 Business and Life Lessons I learned from a Truck Driver | wordpost (December 22nd, 2009 at 1:53am)
[...] we’ll just use Google alerts to monitor conversations about our brand.” We all know what a bad idea that is. Or maybe you’ve heard, “we’d like to try Basecamp but we have this other [...]
Hi Ian, Thanks for mentioning MediaMiser, and I agree completely-Google Alerts is a helpful tool, but doesn’t tell you everything. I use it to monitor our company name, but also use our own software and various other tools (if only just to compare effectiveness).
The irony is that while I did in fact find this post via a Google Alert, it didn’t actually bring me to your site, but the New Democrat Online site, which seems to just pull your feed in. So the question is why wasn’t MediaStyle.ca included in the Google Alert?
More food for thought!
Cheers!
Ian / Kelly
I use Google Alerts as well and agree with the points Ian raises. My main issue with alerts is what Kelly is touching on. I often get an alert for a page that pulls info from my site but only for a brief period of time. By the time I get to the page I have been alerted of, the content is no longer there.
For example, because my blog includes my twitter feed, if I retweet a link Ian posts to the MediaStyle blog and Google catches it on my page, it would alert Ian and then he would come to my blog and not be able to actually find the link because its existence was fleeting. I find I waste a lot of time looking at pages and never finding where the link came from.
Given that I don’t have the resources for a paid solution (just a lowly blogger over here) is there anything else out there that I should be looking at?
Hey Nick,
Not sure if it’s better/how it compares, but SocialMention.com just releases an alert system like Google Alerts.
For any social media content I prefer socialmention.com because it seems to capture EVERYTHING, but as I said, haven’t tried the alerts yet (just signed up!)
Also added bonus is it’s an Ottawa-based company!