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Isn't Google Alerts simply based on keyword/phrase matches? So if I want to get an alert for the keyword "recipe", it'll give me web pages that are about recipe
by AznHisoka 13y ago
Isn't Google Alerts simply based on keyword/phrase matches? So if I want to get an alert for the keyword "recipe", it'll give me web pages that are about recipes, as well as articles that simply have the word 'recipe' (ie "Customer development is the recipe to startup success"). I don't think it ever marketed itself as a topic search alert system.
- PaulHoule 13y agoYeah, but here's a Fermi problem the crowd. How many web pages get created every day that contain the word "recipe"? I'm certain you'd be buried in notifications if Google sent you an alert for every recipe, so it has to have some selection mechanism to send you particular recipes...
- AznHisoka 13y agoWell, if there's a ton of results, I'm sure they use some sort of way to filter out the unpopular ones, such as pagerank.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- beambot 13y agoI thought Google Alerts were to tell you when specific phrases were encountered, like "MyMostlyUniqueFullName" or "MyCompanyName". "Recipe" doesn't seem that useful -- or at least doesn't match my M.O. for Google Alerts.
- gavinpc 13y agoI'm guessing that most Google Alerts are "vanity alerts," as your examples suggest. The putative decline of the service could thus fit with the idea that such functions are meant to be subsumed by Google+.
- est 13y agoI once tried to search for Avatar the movie, but SERP returns many Avatar the video game. I added -game, but realized that if a blog titles "Why I like Avatar (the movie, not the game)", it might be filtered out with the -game keyword.
- zeckalpha 13y agoBut not the TV show? That's disappointing.