Best free and easy alternative to Google Alerts

Setting up Talkwalker Alerts is extremely easy and takes just a few seconds. All you need to do is follow the steps below:

Step 1: Pick a topic to set up an alert and enter it into our alerts search bar.

Step 2:  Enter the email address where you would like to receive your alerts - unlike Google Alerts (linked to your Google account), you’ll receive Talkwalker Alerts on any email address you wish to use.

Step 3: Choose the type of alerts you would like to receive: News, Twitter, Blogs or Discussion forums.

Step 4: Select the language of your results. Talkwalker Alerts is available in 22 different languages.

Step 5: Select how often you would like to receive alerts in your inbox. You can choose “As it happens” if you like to use alerts to keep an eye on Twitter or any other platform in near real-time.

Step 6: Select whether you’d like to receive all mentions of your search query/favorite topic on the internet or only the ones with the most engagement. We recommend that you choose “Only the best results” if you have selected “As it happens” in the previous step. If you choose “As it happens” and “All results” for the same query, you might find your inbox flooded during the day. However, the combination of these features is extremely relevant in a communication/PR crisis situation.

Step 7: Use the preview feature to check that everything is set up as you would like.

Step 8: Hit the “Create Alert” button.

All you have to do after this is verify your email address and we’ll start sending you alerts straight to your inbox. Oh and in case you’re wondering, the entire set-up takes less than 30 seconds!

You can write specific search queries to improve the quality of the results. For example, if you're setting up an alert for a string of words, you should enclose your search query in "quotation marks" to get relevant results.

Use Boolean operators to narrow down your searches. Here are some of the most common ones: AND (results will include both keywords), AND NOT (results will exclude the second keyword), OR (results will include either of the keywords).

Use can also use brackets for complex search queries. Here is an example: If you want to monitor conversations around the brand name Apple, one of the search queries could be: Apple AND (iPhone OR iPad OR iMac OR iWatch OR MacBook)

This could be because your existing alerts did not have Twitter pre-selected in the result type. But there is an easy fix for this - all you have to do is go into your dashboard, hit "edit" next to the alert you'd like to see Twitter results for and add Twitter for your result type.

Talkwalker Alerts can be used in multiple scenarios. Here are a few examples of different types of use cases:

1. Monitor your brand mentions

If you’re looking to simply track your brand or keyword online, Talkwalker Alerts will help you monitor all your brand mentions from across the internet to your inbox. It’s pretty useful for daily stand-up meetings or quick reports on your online brand health. With the addition of Twitter results, it can also be used as a very basic CRM tool.

2. Monitor your competitors

You can also set up Alerts for your competitor's keywords. Keeping a bird's-eye view on your competitors activities can help you take informed decisions and allow you to predict their strategies and moves.

3. Job Hunt

 If you’re a job seeker, our free marketing tool is your best friend. You can use Talkwalker Alerts to find jobs in two ways:

• Set up an alert for your dream companies. Every time a new job is posted on their website, you’ll receive alerts.
• Filter jobs by the position you’re looking at and the country. For instance, an alert query such as "marketing manager" AND source country: FR, will show you all results for marketing manager positions in France.

4. SEO and outreach

If you’re looking to enhance your website’s SEO and have a massive list of websites to reach out to, Talkwalker Alerts will help. Since we deliver results from the internet to your inbox every day, you’ll have a list of websites that mentioned your brand or your keyword and you can reach out to them and ask them for a backlink, instead of performing a Google search each day or logging into another tool. Additionally, since we bring you the tweets with the most engagement, you’ll also have a bunch of influencers to reach out to for collaboration and partnership opportunities.

Yes! Setting up an RSS feed with Talkwalker Alerts is possible. In order to set up an RSS feed, you have to log in to your alerts account by clicking on Talkwalker Alerts, and then click on the “Manage” tab. Next, you simply have to click on the RSS icon next to the alert for which you would like to create an RSS feed and copy the XML file. Then add it to your feed reader, such as Feedly.

Oh and in case you’d like to set up an RSS feed for all of your alerts, you can click on the master RSS icon above all of the alerts and then paste it as a new source in your feed reader.

Et voila: Your RSS feed is ready and good to go.

We’ve all read the usual pitches - an alerting system helps you monitor your favorite topics, your brand, your competitors, and your industry across the internet. But what does this mean for you? How does this make a difference?

Simply put, a free marketing tool like Talkwalker Alerts - which brings results to your inbox from around the internet as well as social platforms like Twitter and Reddit - helps you save time and increase your productivity. And this, is why we’re better than Google Alerts.

Why?

Let’s say you’re a digital marketer and instead of arriving at work, getting a coffee, and monitoring Twitter, Reddit and the internet for brand mentions, you will receive an email with all your alerts, without spending a second doing any of the time consuming research. Additionally, Talkwalker Alerts help you be prepared in case a crisis threatens your brand.

How?

If you have a communication crisis, the first thing that will happen is it will reflect on your social channels. Since we provide results from Twitter, you will be able to see the most relevant and engaged tweets in your inbox at a glance. This means you don’t have to go through every single conversation on Twitter, dealing with the repercussions of the crisis.