Google Alerts Drops RSS Delivery Option

Google has quietly dropped the support to deliver your Google Alerts via RSS.

A warning at the top of the page, for those who had RSS delivery previous set up for Alerts reads:

Google Reader is no longer available. To continue receiving Google Alerts, change to email delivery.

Here is a screen shot:

In October 2008, Google added RSS support for Google Alerts of wWeb search results. Since then it worked very well, that is until Google Alerts in general started to break earlier this year.

For me, losing RSS as an option for delivery of Google Alerts is a big problem. I use it as a method of discovering news on topics otherwise hard to find.

The only alternative is to have all these alerts, which in my case can be hundreds per day, emailed to me. For me, that is not an option. I need the alerts immediately but I also cannot have them in my inbox.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.