Google Alerts System Logic

Anyone have experience here?

[MoneyMan]

I did a bit of searching on old posts and didn't see an answer specifically related to this so I thought I'd throw it out there.

Does anyone know the specific logic associated with Google's New and Web Alerts system?

I suspect it triggers an alert each time a new page or a change to an existing page is indexed by Google and has a reference to the keyword you requested to be monitored. Then the difference between what you receive from "News" vs "Web" vs "News and Web" would be just what pages Google has identified as a "News" source in the Google News versus everything else they index.

Is my assumption true? Has anyone conducted any more conclusive tests on this? Are there additional filters Google employs?

Thanks for any help on clarification.

[MoneyMan]

This is my shameless attempt to move this post back up the list. Just trying this once to see if I get any reponse; then I'll let it die...I promise.

[mhhfive]

you might test this yourself by creating separate "news" and "web" alerts with the same term (perhaps pulled from google's zeitgeist page, to get a popular or frequently updated search)...

I just wish Google would issue these alerts as RSS feeds.

[MoneyMan]

RSS would be a very nice. Email is a bit dated given the technology available these days.

I have performed some very low-level tests and really haven't seen much of a difference. To be frank, I'm really not that impressed the service. I know there are things that are getting indexed with references that I have flagged which do trigger an alert.

I suppose I just have really high expectations for something like this.