Pages That Trigger Google Alerts - A Quality Signal?

[JohnW]

I notice that sometimes a new page with a keyword that I have an alert set for will trigger a Google alert, and sometimes not. Mostly not. My Alerts are set for "all,everything,etc". This occurs when guest blogging here and there. The blogs are all legit, real traffic, & all of the pages show in the cache within 1-2 days of the post, sometimes same day. Alert keywords are always in page title,and/or url, etc.

It seems that somehow new pages and/or new content must meet a certain quality signal or other metric to trigger an alert. Have others experienced the same? Does anyone know more about it?

[simonnreynolds]

I noticed the same thing myself...

Prime example was just yesterday we rewrote some URLs, and Google Alerts seemed the pick up the most popular (and perhaps the most linked to / more trafficked ) pages

[deadsea]

On the other hand, I launched a few hundred pages with some very niche information on them. Obscure enough that about 10 people in the whole world might be interested in each page. I have a Google alert for my brand name. A random two of these pages showed up in my Google alert. I can't for the life of me figure out why they would.

[Clickmonster]

I have been looking at my data and experimenting. One thing that seems to drive this is word count. Nothing under 450 words is getting picked up, 450-700 words are about 50/50. I may try some 1000 word posts and see if it gets better. Of course not all sites I am able to post on are equal and I'm sure that is another factor. I can say though, I am seeing shorter posts of 200-400 words get skipped even on strong domains. Please share your experience.

[soulful house]

wouldn't agree, at least on a respected pr5 domain. I don't think length is an absolute trigger.