Google Alerts has been around long enough to invite some competition. People use Google Alerts to monitor their reputation online, look for jobs, etc. In this article, we will list all the functional shortcomings of Google Alerts and how they can be overcome.
#1 Loaded email box
The average user rarely uses Google Alerts RSS so your inbox gets flooded with Google Alerts. TrackUR enables you to access this information in an Excel table, as well as RSS and email updates. If This Then That can also send you text messages to deliver news instantly.
#2 The key(word) is in the details
Remember reading that article a month ago in your Google Alerts newsletter? Well, chances are, you will no longer be able to find it. Searching your inbox would help… only if you manage to remember the exact title. Let’s be honest, odds are you can’t. There are tools which can save your articles, so that even if something happens to the original source (such as when the server goes down or the site is being reconstructed), your content won’t be lost. A tool with an advanced filtering process is Awario; it allows you to exclude certain keywords from your news feed. Graze uses exclude keywords and filtering by industry to further improve your search.
#3 News, noticias, Nachrichten…
Multilingual news as a necessity
If you need to search for news in several languages, you need to add all the different ways in which your company’s name is written. Some tools automatically detect the different names of the company, so you don’t have to do it manually. One such tool that can do this is Graze, other tools could only search news in different languages once you enter the keyword in each language you want to search in.
#4 The Hieroglyphics Google Alerts
News feed in one language, content in many languages
Your alert might contain news in several languages, such as a Talkwalker alert; how do you navigate through this info when you don’t speak the language? Do you need to translate the page each time? Some services offer automatic translation of news which are not in your selected language – Graze, for example.
#5 Surfing and Security
To read the full content of an article in Google Alerts, you need to visit the site. Some alternative platforms enable you to view the full content without entering the site itself, which decreases the chances of getting malware. Awario saves your updates, so you will not lose any information.
#6 No Real-time
If you want to receive news instantly, the Google Alerts email newsletter is just not for you. You need to use a separate feed reader to receive notifications of your RSS Google Alert, or wait until the next day for your email update. That is slow and unnecessary, since there are lots of tools which provide news in real-time, such as IQ Alerts.
#7 Analyse this:
The number of news you get each day is simply overwhelming. You need the data analysed and ready for further use. Most of the alternative tools in this article use analytics. One of the most popular tools which analyses data as well as gathering it is Mention. You will also find detailed insights and analytics in real time on the Graze dashboard.
The gist of it
All of the above-mentioned services are alternatives to Google Alerts and have improved notifications for ease of use. Five operate in real time: Mention, IQ Alerts, Talkwater, Awario and Graze. They provide you with analytics on the data (except for IQ alerts). TrackUR does not have real-time, although it has insightful analytics. Advanced automatic systems for filtering news and accessing historical data from your searchers are only available in Awario, Graze and IQ Alerts. Mention does not allow you to access old searches and its boolean search might be too advanced for the average user. Multilingual news content is featured in Mention and Talkwalker, as well as in Graze. Graze has an additional feature for translating the multilingual content automatically even on your news feed. Almost all systems allow you to access information without leaving their site, thus ensuring the security of your search.
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