HubShout | Online Marketing Solutions

We were chatting about Google Alerts not catching everything in one of our marketing meetings recently. Well, we're not alone. Danny Sullivan posted about it on Search Engine Land:

Dear Google Alerts: Why Aren’t You Working?

Oh Google. Are you hiding data again?

My problem is the opposite, my clients name happens to be a German word that is used in many German sentences, so his report is full of crazy German stuff that is NOT relevant. Which we could edit these reports before the client got them as of course the date is skewed..

I KNEW it! #googlefail That's for you Jenna :)

Ha! Thanks for thinking of me, Ellen :)

I just got an email from a reseller asking why his clients blog wasn't showing up in Google Alerts! Perfect timing on this post.

thanks!

Quick update: Google Alerts Still Broken

And reputable newsletters are now recommending other services and are dumping Google Alerts because it's been broken for so long.

Looks like Google Alerts is working again.

I'm dying to know how you knew it back up? Doing an alert about this just did not seem right to me.

Well, I noticed more items being picked up in the Google News Alerts I have set up for various keywords this week (since we first read about the troubles with Google Alerts, I had been only receiving maybe one item in those alerts when compared to doing a manual news search of those same keywords). And today I read on Search Engine Land (the link I included in my previous comment) that Alerts appear to be working again. Danny Sullivan: "I’ve been watching my alerts closely each day, and the trend has continued. Google Alerts is again finding new content that I’d expect it to find, content that it used to uncover until it went into a puzzling decline earlier this year." And the commenters on his post also confirm that things have improved.

JCWhelen, are you seeing improvements in alerts you have set up?