"We've decided to retire Web alerts because they are used by very few people and an alert of type Everything will find the same results. This week we'll be changing all alerts of type Web into alerts of type Everything. You may receive more results after this change. If you find that you are getting too many results, you can change the "How often" setting to "once a day" or "once a week." You can also change your search query. You can do this on the alerts management page, or by removing the alert using the link at the bottom of each alert email and creating it again with different settings."
Maybe Google should discontinue Google Alerts and provide regular feeds for search results. Right now, you can create feeds for web search results using Google Alerts, but they have URLs that can't be generated automatically. Google News, Blog Search, and Google Video already offer feeds for search results.
{ Thanks, Abhijeet. }
Hopefully they're working on cleaning up the spam in Alerts, especially if they're returning results from everything. Right now it seems many alerts are frequently coming from some spam blog that is aggregating search terms/links.
ReplyDeleteOh well, that's fine I guess. Thanks for the update, just got the same from Marcel Gordon in Google.
ReplyDeleteThey never worked for me or with long delays
ReplyDeleteI am bummed. I used them to search specific craigslist sections for certain keywords.
ReplyDeleteI bet if more people used them for things like that many more people would be using them.
Add url to Goog Reader & get the same result as web alerts.
ReplyDeleteDon't change it to only rss feeds. I find getting a mail of searchresults for my name every 2 month much easier than checking an rss feed every day!!
ReplyDeleteI depend on Google Alerts for many things. It is one way get news fast :)
ReplyDeleteGoogle is really going down hill lately !
Huh, I just noticed why my google alerts never worked.
ReplyDeleteThe search queries are language-restricted. My query was written in English, but because I had the Google UI in French, the query was set to only query French pages. There is no visible way to change this.
If you have that problem: use http://www.google.com/alerts/export and check the second to last column is what you expect. Make sure to visit http://www.google.com/alerts/manage?hl=en if you want your query to run against pages in English.
I wish I could get RSS feeds from custom search, that would be more usefull.
ReplyDeleteHow the hell do I turn them off?? the alerts I am talking about.
ReplyDeleteI didn't like Google Alerts because I couldn't get it to watch a particular web page for updates
ReplyDeleteI have an alert looking for "viagra" on my web site.
ReplyDeleteIf I ever get hacked, I should get an email when it happens.
I use Google Alerts. They shouldn't shut it. Having RSS feeds, on the other hand, will be handy.
ReplyDeleteGoogle is not discontinuing the service. Instead of getting alerts for web results, you'll receive alerts that include results from Google Web Search, Google News, Google Blog Search etc.
ReplyDeletei love google alerts. but i need the alerts on everything to see if someone is stealing my literary work.
ReplyDeleteSalvad las alertas, son muy útiles y cómodas
ReplyDeleteThis is a good/bad thing for me. For my own use I usually got everything anyway but for clients I would use specific alerts like News for the news section of their blogs.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Google.com sent Alerts to retirement, Google just made this service available in Arabic. Announcement came on the official Google Arabic blog.
ReplyDeleteI have been using Google Alerts on many topics, for long. Perhaps Google ain't getting money from these!!
ReplyDeleteOK, I don't quite understand this.....at first I was thinking they were dumping the service....BUT, it seems like they are just dumping the "Web Search Only" alerts.....they still have the "Comprehensive" which monitors all avenues of possibility.
ReplyDeleteAnd gotta say I love Google Alerts to monitor my works as well as "local news" for my community.
I really, really got hooked to Google Alerts and now seeking a way too have an alert sent to me automatically, but if not available, so be it. It was excellent and very useful to me for my chronicles. "Thanks for the memories."
ReplyDelete