Content Curation World

If your Google Alerts is not working as it used to be and you are getting only a notification every once in a while, you not alone. In fact rumours say that Google Alerts may be dismissed soon and that its service is not actively maintained since quite a while.

Enter TalkWalker Alerts, a Google Alerts clone that replicates almost faithfully the Google tool original layout, UI and features.

If you are not familiar with this kind of tool, its key purpose is one of actively and persistently search for a set of keywords you specify and to report to you, via RSS/email of any instances of new content mentioning your selected keywords.

You can specify within what type of content these keywords need to be found (discussions, news, blogs, everything), in which language sites they appear, and how often and how many of the results found should be sent to you.

If you have used Google Alerts you will find yourself at home instantly, with the added ability to import your old set of alerts from Google. (Just login in your Google Alerts account, click on Export under your list of alerts, and then when you are in TalkWalkerAlerts click on Import. Voilà all your Google Alerts now work also here.)

As in Google you get both a RSS feed for each query / alert, as well as the possibility to receive email alerts as things happen or in a daily or weekly digest.

This is an excellent replacement for Google Alerts. Easy. Intuitive. Essential.

Free to use.

Try it out now: http://www.talkwalker.com/alerts

After Google Reader, Feedburner and Google Alerts may be the next sacrifical offerings by Google to the social gods in order to gradually replace those tools with the features available within the G+ ecosystem.

Mine are only speculations for now, but there seem to be enough evidence if you look at how Google Alerts has performed recently or when it was last time that Feedburner was updated. and when they have been updated last to at least consider that Google may soon put both of them to rest.

SEO expert Danny Sullivan has recently reported on SearchEngineLand: "One of Google’s oldest features is Google Alerts, where you can enter keywords you want to monitor and get an email report each day about any new search results that match those terms. It was awesome; but for several weeks, it’s become nearly useless."

(Source: SearchEngineLand)

So, if you are going to lose also Google Alerts what alternatives are available for you?

Jeremy Floyd looks at this specific issue on his blog and bring back some useful info on eight alternative tools / services you can use right now to get, at least in part, what Google Alerts has been providing you (for free) until now.

Informative, resourceful. 7/10

Full article: http://www.jeremyfloyd.com/2013/03/google-alerts-alternatives/