Google Alerts stopped coming

Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi

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Google Alerts stopped coming

SeekGeek

11:27 am on May 27, 2010 (gmt 0)

I've used Google Alerts without any trouble for over 3 years. Most of my keywords are longtail. Despite that, I used to receive alerts at least weekly. Since the beginning of May, I have not received ANY alerts. I went to the troubleshooting section and checked that they weren't being caught in my spam folder.

Anybody else had a total drop off in Google Alerts? I saw it proposed that with caffeine, the index is smaller and therefore excludes much longtail content. Is this perhaps related?

steve40

12:11 pm on May 27, 2010 (gmt 0)

I monitor my site being mentioned or gaining back links through Google Alerts and up till the start of Caffeine received alerts twice or three times a week so not sure what changed maybe nobody loves my site anymore

BeeDeeDubbleU

1:02 pm on May 27, 2010 (gmt 0)

I have seen a drop in my alerts too.

GAlertsPM

3:46 pm on May 27, 2010 (gmt 0)

Hey folks

I'm the Product Manager for Google Alerts. Please send me a private message with the email address your alerts are sent to and the queries, and I'll look into it.

Cheers

Marcel - Product Manager, Google Alerts

tedster

4:39 pm on May 27, 2010 (gmt 0)

Now that's service - thank you Marcel!

< For anyone who is concerned, we
have confirmed that Marcel is the
Product Manager for Google Alerts >

rustybrick

6:57 pm on May 27, 2010 (gmt 0)

Nice...

Is this related to all Google Alerts, or specific to an Alert for Google News or another service?

webdude

6:59 pm on May 27, 2010 (gmt 0)

I have had the same trouble... no alerts for weeks. Thanks galertspm for letting me pm you...

BeeDeeDubbleU

8:29 pm on May 27, 2010 (gmt 0)

I just got one!

internetheaven

10:57 pm on May 27, 2010 (gmt 0)

We have about 100 daily alerts set up. The numbers coming through dropped on the 18th of March and never really recovered.

I guess, like organic SERPS, the free non-ad-covered alerts are not profit earning and therefore un-important anymore.

They got us in with all the free tools and features ... now we're at their mercy as there is no competition. They were allowed to buy them all up. You can't even get a good analytics service these days. My Urchin is pretty poor, but at least it's not Google ... kind of ... ;)

BillyS

11:59 pm on May 27, 2010 (gmt 0)

Strange to see this one because I thought it was me. We used to get two each day, I don't think I've seen one all week.

Lame_Wolf

12:28 am on May 28, 2010 (gmt 0)

I've been getting them, but all of them of late are showing URL's from bing !?! [but under a different name. I doubt I can mention it here.]

GAlertsPM

8:42 am on May 28, 2010 (gmt 0)

Thanks all - I'll follow up on those who have sent me a message.

Regarding the volume of alerts, we've been tweaking Alerts from a quality point of view to try and avoid sending things that people aren't interested in. If you want more results, change the "Email length" setting for your alerts from "up to 20 results" to "up to 50 results" - you'll get more results with looser filtering.

Marcel