Computer Tricks and Secrets

Short answer: Start with Google Alerts for keyword and brand monitoring, add Talkwalker Alerts as a free second opinion, and layer on Visualping for web-page changes, USGS for earthquakes, and IFTTT for everything else. Between them you can watch the whole web from your inbox without paying a cent. I have leaned on email alerts for years to keep tabs on my own name, the topics I write about, and the handful of websites I check obsessively. Instead of refreshing pages, I let the alerts come to me. Below is the exact stack I use and recommend, updated for 2026 because a few of the old favourites have quietly shut down. How do I set up Google Alerts properly? Google Alerts is still the fastest way to monitor the web for a word or phrase. Go to google.com/alerts , type your search term, and before you hit create, click Show options . That panel is where the real power lives. Here are the settings I change every single time: How often: I pick "At most once a day" so I get ...