With Google Alerts you will be informed about relevant news on self-selected topics or search terms. You can set up Google Alerts via the cor­re­spond­ing website and refine them with the help of some search pa­ra­me­ters.

$1 Domain Names – Grab your favorite one
  • Simple reg­is­tra­tion
  • Premium TLDs at great prices
  • 24/7 personal con­sul­tant included
  • Free privacy pro­tec­tion for eligible domains

What are Google Alerts useful for?

Google Alerts do not wait until you start a search but inform you as soon as there is news about the topic for which you have set up Google’s service. This works great in a private context, for example, for travel des­ti­na­tions, news about celebri­ties, or price de­vel­op­ments for certain products. Google Alerts can also play an important role in a pro­fes­sion­al context.

If you set up Google Alerts, you can use the tool for com­pe­ti­tion mon­i­tor­ing or for your rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment. Criticism, comments, am­bi­gu­i­ties, or even digital frenzies regarding your company or a product will be hard to miss. This gives you the chance to intervene ef­fec­tive­ly, respond early on, or make ad­just­ments. Together with thought­ful and seamless social media mon­i­tor­ing, this is an important tool to help shape the con­ver­sa­tion online.

Set up Google Alerts in 5 steps

If you want to set up Google Alerts for personal or business use, you can easily do so by visiting the cor­re­spond­ing subpage on Google. We will explain step by step what you need to do for this.

Step 1: First, sign in with your Google account and access the Google Alerts page.

Image: Screenshot from Google Alerts
In the search box, enter the term you want to be notified about.

Step 2: Now enter the term for which you want to set up Google Alerts in the search bar. The procedure here is the same as the normal search.

Step 3: Now you will be shown a preview and can get a first im­pres­sion of whether the search meets your re­quire­ments. If it does, select “Show Options”.

Step 4: Here you will now find various selection options. Sources and languages can be included or excluded. In addition, you determine how often you want to be informed about news. If all the spec­i­fi­ca­tions meet your ex­pec­ta­tions, click on “Create Alert”.

Image: Screenshot of the choices in Google Alerts
Before setting the alert, you have various choices to make.

Step 5: Now you will receive the news about your Google Alerts in your inbox or as an RSS feed. On the Google Alerts page, you will find an overview of your alerts and you can com­plete­ly change or delete them at any time.

Optimize Google Alerts with search operators

If you want to keep an eye on a very current or popular topic, it could be that the Google Alerts get out of hand and you have to search again manually for the news that is relevant for you. To prevent this, you can refine your selection. With the help of Boolean operators, special char­ac­ters, or punc­tu­a­tion marks you will find the best results. Here is a listing of some useful Google search operators that will help you set up Google Alerts.

Basic search operators

Search operator Function
"ā€¦" Only results that contain the exact spelling will be conĀ­sidĀ­ered.
- Terms after the minus are excluded from the search.
| or OR With this search operator you can display results for two different search terms.
* Serves as a wildcard.
() The parenĀ­theĀ­ses can be used to group search terms.
x..y If you enter numbers before and after the dots, the search results are displayed from the first to the second number. This is useful for amounts or years.

Advanced search operators

The advanced search operators are placed in front of the cor­re­spond­ing search terms and delimited with a colon.

Search operator Function
intext: Displays results that contain a specific word.
inanchor: Displays results that contain a specific term in the link text.
intitle: Displays results that contain a specific word in the title.
inurl: Displays results that contain a specific word in the URL.
location: Displays results that involve a specific location.
site: Displays results from a specific website.
source: Displays results from a specific source.
Go to Main Menu