I see variations of this complaint about Google Alerts all day on Twitter. It is most often expressed as getting alerts on the “wrong” person when doing a vanity search. Sometimes it is the “wrong” company. The recipient knows what they want, so anything else is obviously wrong. Instead of thinking about what you want when creating an alert, try telling Google what you don’t want. The more explicit you are, the fewer irrelevant emails you will receive.
Block multiple word results. The other day someone complained that Google Alerts was delivering results for triple hop when they had a search for triplehop. Google search tends to be fuzzy, which means that they try to give you variations on words, even single words. You can block this delivery of multiple word variations by putting a + sign in front of a word with no spaces. Try these two searches:
triplehop
+triplehop
Add exclusion keywords. This is the best way to get Google Alerts on just the “real” you. I wrote a complete blog post on this, but here is the basic idea. Find words that identify the “wrong” result, and add them to your search with a – sign in front with no spaces. This tells Google not to send alerts that contain this word.
pizza
pizza -dominos
You can add more and more exclusion terms until the irrelevant results drop down to an acceptable level.
pizza -dominos -chicago -party
Block irrelevant sites. If you keep getting alerts from a site that you don’t care about, add it as an exclusion term with the minus sign and site: operator.
book -site:amazon.com
Keep testing in Google Search. Following this procedure in Google Alerts is too frustrating, since you have to wait to see your results. It’s better to test different versions of your search in Google Search until you get it right. Here is an example that shows hard hard you may have to work. What is you need to track mentions of apple, the kind you eat, not the computer products. Here is a search I finally came up with that does a fairly good job of this. Google Alerts allows up to 32 words per search term, so there is still room for more.
apple -macbook -imac -itunes -monitor -ipod -computer -app -pc -microsoft -windows -”steve jobs” -wozniak -phone -iphone -cupertino -site:apple.com
Learn more. I have a free Google Alerts tutorial that can give you even more ideas on perfecting your search terms.
Related Posts
- Searching for your name with Google Alerts
- It's a Reputation Report, not a Vanity Search
- Google Alerts Bug: Multiple locations aren’t allowed for news alerts
- Google Alerts Trick: News alerts for a single source
- Google Alerts trick: Finding comments on Google News stories
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It’s a Reputation Report, not a Vanity Search
by Adam Green on April 19, 2009
in Google Alerts, Negative comments, Reputation management, Vanity search
It’s time to rename the vanity search. The current name, along with ego search, implies that you are doing this out of narcissism. You are so vain that you need to continually Google yourself to see if you really exist. That type of thinking shows a complete misunderstanding of the vital importance of Google’s results to every individual, organization, and business. To most people, Google is now reality. If you aren’t in Google, you have no importance. If Google contains negative mentions of your name, that is now part of your “permanent record.” This may sound excessive, but let’s take a look at some of the ways your Google reputation can affect your life:
I’ll leave the public policy implications of this for the politicians to debate. What is clear is that your Google reputation is at least as important as your credit report, and may become more so over time. Maintaining a Google Alert on the name of your company, organization, or business is not vanity or ego gratification, it is a basic reality of modern life.
Tagged as: Google Alerts, negative mentions, Reputation management
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