Google Alerts Not Working
The checkbox is fine. Indexing lag, spam filters, and keyword noise are why the mail never shows up.
Google Alerts not working is usually indexing lag, spam filters, or keyword noise, not a broken checkbox.
The dashboard looks healthy. Frequency is as-it-happens. Sources is Automatic. You still find the story on Twitter, hunt the inbox, and come up empty. Or you find twelve emails about a phrase that showed up in a listicle. You mute the alert. A week later you decide the product died.
It did not die. It is a keyword email tied to Google's public index. That still works if you want a casual drip on your name, a hobby, or a low-stakes mention and you only check mail. I still run one of those. I stopped the day I needed a pricing URL watched, a Slack ping, and a sentence that said what changed.
Why the mail never shows up
Alerts wait on crawl. A company blog with weak inbound links can sit unpublished in Google's eyes for hours. A page that updates in place, same URL, new number, often never fires because the index already has that URL. Reddit threads, many filings, and a lot of careers pages never enter the index the way a news homepage does. You are not crazy. The mail never had a chance.
When the mail does send, Gmail may park it in Promotions or Spam. Volume trains the filter. A noisy keyword is the fastest way to bury the one useful hit. People call that broken. It is noise plus a filter doing its job.
What working should mean
Working is a ping when the thing you named happened. Paste a URL and write the rule in English. "Tell me when this careers page adds a role in London. Ignore layout and cookie banners." Or name a topic. "Primary news or filings that this company raised a round. Skip recap roundups." AyeWatch reads the page and the topic. It sends a short summary. Free Preview is six lifetime runs across three topics, Daily or slower, push and in-app. Pro is $9 a month for 50 topics and six-hour checks. Pro+ is 150 topics, hourly. ASAP is Max and Ultra. Paid plans add email, Slack, Discord, webhooks, and a REST API.
If you want the side-by-side, read the Google Alerts alternative guide or the AyeWatch vs Google Alerts page.
Start a monitor in under a minute
Free Preview is six lifetime runs across three topics. No card.
Try AyeWatch freeWhen to keep Google Alerts
Keep it for casual keyword email. Do not pay AyeWatch to watch your own name once a week. Do not expect a screenshot overlay, a CSS picker, or an uptime robot. AyeWatch watches pages and topics and tells you what changed.
Start with the one tab you already refresh. If the first summary names a real change, the checkbox was never the problem.