How to Save Money By Using Google Alerts

14
May

If you’re anything like me, you probably use Google on a daily basis. But did you know that in addition to helping you stay up-to-date on the topics you’re most interested in, the search engine’s free “Alerts” feature can be a powerful tool for saving money?

Google Alert Basics

Google Alerts is a simple, free tool that can be used in a number of ways to help you save money on most of the things you buy online.

What Are Google Alerts? 

Google Alerts allows you to choose a keyword (your own name, for example), and get a notification from Google whenever there’s new content on the web that contains that keyword. 

What’s important to understand when it comes to saving money is that Google Alerts works not only with new content, but also with updated content. That means you can use the service to get notifications about price drops and deals from your favorite brands. 

How To Create A Google Alert 

First, here are the simple steps to create a Google Alert.

1. Go to Google.com/alerts
2. In the search box, enter the keyword you want alerts for (Athleta, for example).
3. Under “Show Options,” choose your alert settings from the following options.
   • How often: You can choose daily, weekly or real-time.
   • Sources: You can choose from news, blogs, websites and a few other options. In most cases, you should go with “Automatic,” which will send you the widest array of results. 
   • Language.
   • Region. 
   • How many: You can choose to receive all the results or “only the best.” With the second option, Google will filter out results it thinks are spammy or low-quality. 
   • Deliver to: You can choose to have the results sent to your email address, or you can get a link for an RSS feed if you use an RSS or news reader.
4. Once you’ve set your options, click “Create Alert.”

That’s all there is to it! Note that below the settings list is a preview of the type of results your alert will produce. If you’re not happy with what you see there, you can change the setting to make them more or less inclusive. 

Two Great Ways To Save Money With Google Alerts 

Google Alerts has two especially powerful ways to help you save money. Here are specific instructions for leveraging them.

#1. Get Target Price Notifications 

This is the most powerful way to use Google Alerts to save money, and perhaps the best-kept secret about using the tool. 

Google can do more than just read text. You can also format your search to give it specific commands. And one of those commands allows you to request notifications about products within a price range of your choosing. 

Here’s the command:

“Product Name Product Features $X00..$Y00”

Note: The command must be in quotes and have two dots between the prices.

How can this save you money? Google Alerts allows you to set a price target for an item you want to buy. 

Let’s say the Athleta product you’ve had your eye on costs $75, but you only want to pay $50. In that case, you can set your command with the dollar amounts of $25..$50. When Google detects a new or updated web page that features an Athleta product within that price range — as the result of a sale, for example — you’ll get an alert in your inbox. 

Here, your command string would be:

“Athleta $25..$50”

Of course, this would mean you’d get notifications about every Athleta product within that price range. Fortunately, you can also add product features to your command. 

For example, let’s say you’re in the market for a specific Patagonia coat. Simply add product specifics as follows: 

“Patagonia Women’s Torrentshell 3L Jacket $X00..$Y00”

Note that in late 2019, Google Shopping launched a dedicated price tracking feature. When you clicked on an item in Google Shopping results, there was an option that allowed you to track the price and get an alert if it went down. Unfortunately, this feature was suspended — leaving the Google Alerts method described as your best option to save money. 

#2. Get Coupons And Promo Codes Delivered To Your Inbox 

There are various sites that will show you coupons and promo codes for a particular item, brand or store, but if you’ve ever used one, you know they can be frustrating. DealTaker is top-notch when it comes to keeping their list of offers up-to-date, but few other sites are so diligent. 

Often, you’ll find that the coupons (and particularly the promo codes) are expired when you try to use them at checkout. Because Google Alerts arrive in real-time (depending on your settings) the information is very up-to-date and you won’t get as many of those expired coupons and discount codes. 

One option is to set up Google Alerts for a specific item, such as the Patagonia Women’s Torrentshell 3L Jacket, and get alerts from all across the web.

For example, the search phrase Patagonia Women’s Torrentshell 3L Jacket Coupon Code will return results that contain all of those words in any combination. (If you put the phrase in quotes, you’ll only get results that are an exact match.) 

Another option is to request results from specific stores. 

To accomplish this, you’ll need to use the “OR” command, as follows: 

“Patagonia Women’s Torrentshell 3L Jacket” Sale DICK’S Sporting Goods OR REI OR Nordstrom

In this example, we’re telling Google to send us any results that contain… 

• The exact phrase “Patagonia Women’s Torrentshell 3L Jacket” 
• The word “sale”
• And either the words DICK’S Sporting Goods, REI or Nordstrom 

If we didn’t use the “OR” command, Google would only notify us of results that contained all three of those stores. 

You can also search for new mentions of a phrase on a particular site using Google Alerts. For example, the below search would provide you with an alert any time there’s a mention of the word Athleta on Dealtaker.com

Site:dealtaker.com Athleta

Google Alerts Tips

1. Set up a dedicated email address for online shopping. If you use your work or personal email for Google Alerts, you may end up wading through tons of messages clogging up your inbox. Google makes it easy for users to be logged into two Gmail accounts simultaneously, so you can check your regular account and the account you use for Alerts at the same time.
2. Always use a cash-back portal before placing your order. When you use a cash-back portal like Swagbucks for your online shopping, you can save even more money! The site is free to use and shoppers can save as much as 20% on purchases from dozens of retailers.
3. Use a cash-back rewards credit card to pay for your purchases. Doing so can save you typically between 1-5% for each dollar you spend. 

Summary 

Google is a big part of our lives now. And although we use the site for everything under the sun, few people know of this great money-saving hack.

Tags: Google