Google Alerts is broken. Talkwalker is an alternative.

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Need A Google Alerts Replacement? Meet Talkwalker
Mar 27, 2013
by Gary Price

With Google Alerts coming under fire as being broken, an impressive new service has stepped up to appeal to those seeking an alternative: Talkwalker.

Luxembourg-based Talkwalker is a social media monitoring company that has now released its own keyword-based alerts resource. The free service utilizes Google’s Web, news, and blog databases and delivers alerts by email or RSS.

Talkwalker_home So, are Talkwalker Alerts the Google Alerts replacement many are looking for?

I spent a few hours running several alerts and at this point I’m both optimistic and even impressed.v A few initial impressions follow.

Interface & Registration

The look, feel, and features of Talkwalker Alerts are nearly identical to Google’s alerts service.

Keyword alerts are available for “everything,” news, blogs, and/or discussions. They can be delivered “as it happens” or “once a day.” You can also limit by language and how many results are received:

Simply enter your email and you’re done.

The alert management page also appears nearly identical to Google Alerts. Here you can modify an alert query, grab the RSS URL, delete alerts, and other management tasks.

Overall, the learning curve is minute for those who have use Google’s alert tool. That’s good news for users and Talkwalker.

By the way, Talkwalker also makes it easy to import your current Google alerts.

But Do They Work?

I’ve only been using the service for a few hours, and I need to do more testing, but given the fact that I’ve had issues with the frequency and timeliness of Google Alerts for a long time (long before the current discussion got underway) several of the alerts I created did trigger with new material in a very timely manner.

So, for this reason alone, Talkwalker Alerts are worth being aware of and perhaps taking a look at to see if they meet your needs.