When Google Alerts stopped working for multiple days earlier this month, many digital publishers were caught off guard. Magazine publishers have come to rely on Google’s free service for monitoring mentions of their publications and keeping tabs on other relevant topics. However, with Google Alerts outages becoming more frequent in 2021, it’s never a bad idea to start sourcing some alternative keyword monitoring solutions.
If you’re interested in making the jump from Google Alerts to a different monitoring service, here are five options to consider.
5 Alternatives to Google Alerts for Publishers
1. Talkwalker Alerts
Talkwalker Alerts bills itself as the free and easy alternative to Google Alerts for digital publishers. Publishers can use the service to monitor brand mentions for free. In addition to monitoring a magazine’s title, publishers can also monitor competitors, events, or any other topic. Talkwalker monitors for keywords across news platforms, blogs, forums, websites, and social media platforms like Twitter. The service then consolidates all mentions and sends regular emails with the most important details that publishers should know.
Unlike Google Alerts, Talkwalker also offers advanced social media analytics technology that filters the most relevant conversations and tweets with the maximum engagement, so publishers can feel confident that they’re only being alerted to the mentions that actually matter. Talkwalker offers free tools. Larger magazine publishers that need additional support can contact Talkwalker for custom pricing information.
2. Social Searcher
Social Searcher’s free social media search engine gives online magazine publishers a way to monitor public mentions in social networks and elsewhere on the web. Used by publications like Entrepreneur magazine, MakeUseOf, and Social Media Examiner, Social Searcher puts its users’ mentions together into all-in-one dashboards that can be accessed from any device.
Social Searcher also provides publishers with actionable social analytics and audience insights. For example, digital publishers get instant notifications when topics or articles trigger certain behaviors. Publishers can also use Social Searcher to learn which types of articles are most popular, depending on the day or time. Social Searcher is free to use, with premium monitoring tools that are available for larger publishers with more robust needs.
3. Mention
Mention is a straightforward online monitoring tool that many digital publishers are using as an alternative to Google Alerts. Mention claims to monitor over 1 billion sources across the web daily, including press articles, review sites, forums, and blogs. Like some of the other sophisticated monitoring platforms on this list, Mention has the ability to pull out relevant conversations happening online, so publishers can track the mentions that are actually driving public opinion.
Publishers who connect their social accounts to Mention can draft, schedule, and publish posts from multiple channels within the Mention platform. They can also use the tool to uncover trends in conversation and analyze data from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Mention offers a free plan. Pro accounts for small businesses cost $99 per month.
4. Keyhole
Keyhole is more sophisticated than Google Alerts, and it’s a good step up for magazine publishers that are looking for influencer marketing, social media listening, and analytics features.
Keyhole is all about real-time data, so users can find out immediately when people are talking about their own publications or their competitors. Publishers can access all direct and indirect mentions, keywords, and hashtags across social media, news articles, blogs, and forums. The company uses machine learning to filter conversations, and it’s able to notify publishers immediately when there are multiple posts complaining about a topic or when posts about the publication are beginning to go viral. Keyhole is used by media organizations like Billboard and BBC News. Custom pricing is available.
5. Awario
Awario is slightly different from Google Alerts and some other social monitoring tools on this list, in that this service actually encourages publishers to jump into the online conversations happening about their brands. Awario crawls more than 13 billion web pages daily, in addition to the APIs, to provide users with immediate information about what people are saying about their brands online.
Using the publication’s name or title as the keyword, publishers can find discussions on social networks and then join those discussions in real-time as a way to share links and spread the word about the topics they cover. The Awario Starter plan costs $24 per month.
Want to learn more about how top online magazine publishers are using social media to grow their businesses? Check out Web Publisher PRO’s guide to the most important social media planning tools for publishers in 2021.
