What makes a site appear in Google Alerts? And does it mean anything?

[BeytzNet]

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

[gazzerman1]

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

[Andy-Halliday]

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.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

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

[MoosaHemani]

I probably have to go with the Ady’s idea on Google Alters! This is exactly how I think Google Alters works!!

[Houses]

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.

[BeytzNet]

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://moz.com/community/q/does-including-your-site-in-google-news-and-google-alerts-helps-with-seo

Thanks

[BeytzNet]

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?