Are Google alerts supposed to be in real time? 22 hours delays normal?

[Oimachi2]

I've set up Google alerts and sometimes it takes almost a whole day before they show up....

I use it for finding Gigs and by the time the alert shows up there are already dozen of bidders...

Is this normal?

Is there anything else out there that will work in real time?

[renomart]

In the Google Alert drop-down box titled: How often, select "As it happens"

[Oimachi2]

Of course I selected "as it happens" !

They are NOT coming in real time, everything is delayed.

Anybody experience the same?

[turbocharged]

It's quite normal for the alerts to be delayed as Google must first crawl and process the pages it finds. Besides the delay, the number of results returned by Google is rather thin. That's why I quit relying solely on Google Alerts and opted to use a different service that not only sends results to my E-mail faster, but actually includes many of the pages that Google ignores. Especially for reputation management, it's important that nothing is overlooked.

[netmeg]

Yea, sometimes it's days and days. I just saw one for 4th of July. You just can't depend on them for anything critical.