Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What makes a site appear in Google Alerts? And does it mean anything?
-
Hi All,
I recently started using Google Alerts more and more and while sites I support never appear there (not surprising) I recently noticed few very poor and low quality sites that do.
This site for example appears quite a bit in its niche.
So to my questions...
What makes a site appear in Google Alerts? And does it mean anything?
Thanks
-
Great article though MOZ for example does not appear in "news" search which seems weird. Does it mean it won't come up in alerts for terms like "SEO"...?
Also, do you think I should ask for inclusion in the news? Does it help with SEO?
-
Thanks Andy-Halliday but this is not what I meant (though it is a good implementation which I practice also).
I wondered why some sites articles get noted and others don't. gazzerman1's response seems right and the article he referred stated that you might ask for inclusion (MOZ for example does not appear in the news and therefore may not appear in "search term" alerts though I doubt it).
Anyhow, this also led to my next question if it means anything if it is good to ask to be included in the news: http://cloudz.click/community/q/does-including-your-site-in-google-news-and-google-alerts-helps-with-seo
Thanks
-
As others have said, alerts will come to you based on the search terms and frequency you have told Google - you can change these if the results emailed to you aren't what you are looking for.
In terms of what it means, all it means is that the web pages have matched the terms you asked for. It doesn't mean the pages are of any set quality or ranking.
Alerts are great for tracking mentions of your brand and those of competitors.
-
I probably have to go with the Ady’s idea on Google Alters! This is exactly how I think Google Alters works!!
-
Just to correct a little something on here, you don't need to have anything in Google news or be in the top 10 for anything.
Google Alerts will trigger based on your keywords / phrase and then mail you based on your criteria as they are discovered. I have a lot of these set "as they happen" and are all related to brand mentions / articles of interest.
-Andy
-
I have a google alerts for 'brand name' and set it to email every time the 'brand name' appears on the web.
Its then when Google finds a new mention of my 'brand name' anywhere on the web it triggers an alert to me.
It doesn't send me historical mentions on the brand, but it does send me an email every time the brand is mentioned. I sometimes get really old articles but it just means Google have just found the article.
If its on the bigger, more popular sites I can get alerts within minutes / hours of the article going live, sometimes its a few weeks later and the longest I've had is a few years.
So the alerts are triggered every time Google find a new mention of the 'search term' you have requested. They don't send historical mentions about the brand.
-
Basically you need to be in Google News and then the article thats in the news must reach the top 10 in Search Results
Looks like this should cover all your questions
http://homebusiness.about.com/od/yourbusinesswebsite/a/google-alerts.htm
I actually learnt something myself as well on there, thanks for making me refresh my memory
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Trying to get Google to stop indexing an old site!
Howdy, I have a small dilemma. We built a new site for a client, but the old site is still ranking/indexed and we can't seem to get rid of it. We setup a 301 from the old site to the new one, as we have done many times before, but even though the old site is no longer live and the hosting package has been cancelled, the old site is still indexed. (The new site is at a completely different host.) We never had access to the old site, so we weren't able to request URL removal through GSC. Any guidance on how to get rid of the old site would be very appreciated. BTW, it's been about 60 days since we took these steps. Thanks, Kirk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kbates0 -
Home Page Disappears From Google - But Rest of Site Still Ranked
As title suggests we are running into a serious issue of the home page disapearing from Google search results whilst the rest of the site still remains. We search for it naturally cannot find a trace, then use a "site:" command in Google and still the home page does not come up. We go into web masters and inspect the home page and even Google states that the page is indexable. We then run the "Request Indexing" and the site comes back on Google. This is having a damaging affect and we would like to understand why this issue is happening. Please note this is not happening on just one of our sites but has happened to three which are all located on the same server. One of our brand which has the issue is: www.henweekends.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JH_OffLimits0 -
URL Injection Hack - What to do with spammy URLs that keep appearing in Google's index?
A website was hacked (URL injection) but the malicious code has been cleaned up and removed from all pages. However, whenever we run a site:domain.com in Google, we keep finding more spammy URLs from the hack. They all lead to a 404 error page since the hack was cleaned up in the code. We have been using the Google WMT Remove URLs tool to have these spammy URLs removed from Google's index but new URLs keep appearing every day. We looked at the cache dates on these URLs and they are vary in dates but none are recent and most are from a month ago when the initial hack occurred. My question is...should we continue to check the index every day and keep submitting these URLs to be removed manually? Or since they all lead to a 404 page will Google eventually remove these spammy URLs from the index automatically? Thanks in advance Moz community for your feedback.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peteboyd0 -
When i search for my domain name - google asks "did you mean" - why?
Hi all, I just noticed something quite odd - if i do a search for my domain name (see: http://goo.gl/LBc1lz) google shows my domain as first result, but it also asks "did i mean" and names another website with very similar name. the other site has far lower PA/DA according to Moz, any ideas why google is doing this? and more inportantly how i could stop it? please advise James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | isntworkdull0 -
Wrong country sites being shown in google
Hi, I am having some issues with country targeting of our sites. Just to give a brief background of our setup and web domains We use magento and have 7 connected ecommerce sites on that magento installation 1.www.tidy-books.co.uk (UK) - main site 2. www.tidy-books.com (US) - variations in copy but basically a duplicate of UK 3.www.tidy-books.it (Italy) - fully translated by a native speaker - its' own country based social medias and content regularly updated/created 4.www.tidy-books.fr (France) - fully translated by a native speaker - its' own country based social medias and content regularly updated/created 5.www.tidy-books.de (Germany) - fully translated by a native speaker - uits' own country based social medias and content regularly updated/created 6.www.tidy-books.com.au (Australia) - duplicate of UK 7.www.tidy-books.eu (rest of Europe) - duplicate of UK I’ve added the country and language href tags to all sites. We use cross domain canonical URLS I’ve targeted in the international targeting in Google webmaster the correct country where appropriate So we are getting number issues which are driving me crazy trying to work out why The major one is for example If you search with an Italian IP in google.it for our brand name Tidy Books the .com site is shown first then .co.uk and then all other sites followed on page 3 the correct site www.tidy-books.it The Italian site is most extreme example but the French and German site still appear below the .com site. This surely shouldn’t be the case? Again this problem happens with the co.uk and .com sites with when searching google.co.uk for our keywords the .com often comes up before the .co.uk so it seems we have are sites competing against each other which again can’t be right or good. The next problem lies in the errors we are getting on google webmaster on all sites is having no return tags in the international targeting section. Any advice or help would be very much appreciated. I’ve added some screen shots to help illustrate and happy to provide extra details. Thanks UK%20hreflang%20errors.png de%20search.png fr%20search.png it%20search.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tidybooks1 -
SEO site Review
Does anyone have suggestions on places that provide in depth site / analytics reviews for SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gordian0 -
How to NOT appear in Google results in other countries?
I have ecommerce sites the only serve US and Canada. Is there a way to prevent a site from appearing in the Google results in foreign countries? The reason I ask is that we also have a lot of informational pages that folks in other countries are visiting, then leaving right after reading. This is making our overall Bounce Rate very high (64%). When we segment the GA data to look at just our US visitors, then the Bounce Rate drops a lot. (to 48%) Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GregB1230 -
Getting Google to Correct a Misspelled Site Link...Help!
My company website recently got its site links in google search... WooHoo! However, when you type TECHeGO into Google Search one of the links is spelled incorrectly. Instead of 'CONversion Optimization' its 'COversion Optimization'. At first I thought there was a misspelling on that page somewhere but there is not and have come to the conclusion that Google has made a mistake. I know that I can block the page in webmaster tools (No Thanks) but how in the crap can I get them to correct the spelling when no one really knows how to get them to appear in the first place? Riddle Me That Folks! sitelink.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TECHeGO0