Mention is a free Google Alerts alternative where you can keep track of whenever someone talks about your website, product or service on the Internet. As some of you have undoubtedly noticed, Google Alerts are not working properly for the past couple of weeks. Updates aren’t coming as frequently as they used to, which forces users to look for alternative, Mention is one such alternative.
Windows desktop client of Mention can be seen on the image below. This free Google Alerts alternative offers clients for all the major platforms, Linux, Windows, Mac, including iOS and Android. Website app is also available, for web browser access to your online account where you can also keep track of updates about the search terms that you’ve setup.
Similar software: TalkWalker Alerts.
Key features of Mention – free content change notification software are:
- Free for up to 3 search terms (alerts) and 500 change updates per month
- Allows you to add both inclusion and exclusion search terms for alerts
- Good language support – French, English, Spanish, German, 39 more
- Social networking – invite your friends and share alerts with them
- Collaboration – turn alert updates into tasks for your team
- Favoriting – add bookmarks to alerts which you find most interesting
- Statistics – activity charts, pie charts, average mentions, etc.
- Searches the web, Facebook, Twitter, news, blogs, videos, forums, images
- Website blockers – block websites from showing up in your alerts
- Filtering – prefers results from influential sources first
Alert updates can be tracked using the client application, or online by logging in on the website. Depending on the search terms that you’re interested in tracking and being updated about, free account with it’s 500 updates might not last very long, because alerts are coming in very fast, but if you have a small startup, which is only starting being noticed by the Internet, free account is more than enough. Here’s a few pointers to help you get started.
How to receive alerts about brand, product and service mentions online with Mention: free Google Alerts alternative
Alerts are setup using a wizard. After registration on the website, you should be presented with the first step right away, if not, click on the blue plus sign in the top left corner of the screen.
Enter the expression that you would like to look for, and expressions that you would like to avoid, languages, type of content you’re interested in, websites you’d like to block, and so on. When you’re done, alert should appear in the left sidebar.
Updates are received similarly to how emails are received. Left sidebar hold the “inbox” for each alert which you’ve setup. To access statistics, select the pie chat icon from the menu in the top left corner of the screen. Everything works the same in both desktop clients and the web based version of Mention.
Conclusion
Mention is a very powerful Google Alerts alternative, which offers a lot of useful tools for keeping track of how the public interest for your products, services, website and brands is progressing. Free account might be a bit limiting, but it’s perfect for users who are just starting. Join for free.
