Google Retires Web Alerts, Replaces With 'Everything' Option

Leena Rao

Leena Rao is currently a Senior Editor for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

Google is making a few changes with web alerts this week. The search giant is retiring web alerts and replacing it with an ‘everything’ option.’

Google says that they are retiring web alerts because they weren’t used by enough people. Everything essentially will return the same results as web results. You can also filter your results by news, blogs, video and discussions.

Could this be the beginning of the end of Google Alerts?

Here’s the message Google sent to Web alerts users:

Dear Google Alerts user,

We’re contacting you because you have an alert of type Web. We’ve
decided to retire Web alerts because (1) they are used by very few
people and (2) an alert of type Everything will find the same results.

This week we’ll be changing all alerts of type Web into alerts of type
Everything. Your alert will continue to include results from all kinds
of web sites.

You may receive more results after this change. If you find that you
are getting too many results, you can change the “How often” setting
to “once a day” or “once a week.” You can also change your search
query. You can do this on the alerts management page
(www.google.com/alerts/manage), or by removing the alert using the
link at the bottom of each alert email and creating it again with
different settings.

We hope that you’ll continue to find your alert useful.

Hat tip to Wallace N.

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