Google Alerts: Still Broken

Last month, I wrote my Dear Google Alerts: Why Aren’t You Working? story. Soon after, Google told me things were improved. That’s not been the case for me; and now, another open letter about how poorly the service is working has appeared.

The latest letter is from The Financial Brand, a website for financial marketers. It writes, in part:

The Financial Brand has frequently encouraged bank and credit union marketing executives around the world to use Google Alerts. This advice is now fully retracted.Google Alerts was once a very important and efficient tool to monitor mentions of your brand on the web. It is now so unreliable that it has been rendered effectively useless.

The letter covers the same thing I and others have found, that some time late last year, Google Alerts effectively stopped finding new news content and other fresh material, as they were supposed to.

Three days after my post, Google — which had no on-the-record statement about what was wrong — at least told me that things should be working better. They haven’t been. Since that time, I’ve seen no change with Google Alerts. It’s continued to miss finding stuff I know it should be locating.

I’ll check again with Google about what’s up. Until then, I’m surprised Bing hasn’t dived in to launch Bing Alerts. We’ll also be working up a list of Google Alert alternatives. Stay tuned.