Google Alerts - competitor shows often, but this site rarely

[realcontent]

Hi folks,

A website publisher is asking me why his competitor appears to have all his stories appearing in google alerts for the keyword term, "widget dealers" while his own rarely do.

I am wondering if the rss feeds has something to do w it. For example, ours does not have a pubdate...does anybody know best practices for getting mentioned in google alerts?

Thanks...

[tedster]

You bring up an interesting question to me.

Beginning at the year-end holidays, there were changes in Google Alerts [webmasterworld.com]. For a short while, a link in a blogroll meant that every new post from that blog was triggering an Alert, even if the post itself was way off topic. Then that got fixed - I'm happy to say. So it's clear that Google Alerts is an area that has been under active work recently.

If the publisher can add a pubdate to the RSS feed, please report back whether this changes the Alerts situation for them. The publisher might also consider whether the RSS feed directly pings Google Blog Search [blogsearch.google.com] for a new article.

[realcontent]

Tedster - thanks for your help, I will make these recommendations and report back findings.