How to create a bunch of Google Alerts, in 3 minutes?

Google Alerts is a very handy and powerful service to stay informed of what's happening in a particular field.

I'm a huge fan of this service and I create dozens of new alerts every week. Recently, I wanted to add 100+ Google Alerts to being informed about APIs that we're working with at Bearer.

Unfortunately, Google Alerts doesn't provide an API. And I didn't felt ok to share my Google credentials (email + password) to the available libraries.

What do we need?

First, a list of keywords that we want to add alerts on:

// Here's my list of keywords to add Google Alerts on;
// Change it with whatever you want to be informed of.
const keywords = ["GitHub API", "Google Alerts API", "Dev.to API"]

Then, head to Google Alerts so we will learn how it works behind the scene:

I'm using Google Chrome, but that should work just fine with Safari or Firefox.

Create a Google Alert with JS

On Google Alerts homepage, open the developer tools Alt+Command+J (on Mac) or Ctrl+Shit+J (on Windows), then open the Network tab. You should see something like:

Now create a sample alert using dev.to as the keyword. The network tab will show a request to the /create endpoint. Use Copy as fetch to see what's inside that request:

We are almost done 🙌 If you paste that into the console, you will have something like:

// Code has been prettified
fetch(
  "https://www.google.com/alerts/create?x=ABJHsmWAbcU-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&hl=us",
  {
    "credentials": "include",
    "headers": {
    "accept": "*/*",
    "accept-language": "fr-FR,fr;q=0.9,en-US;q=0.8,en;q=0.7",
    "cache-control": "no-cache",
    "content-type": "application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8",
    "pragma": "no-cache",
    "sec-fetch-mode": "cors",
    "sec-fetch-site": "same-origin",
    "x-client-data": "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
    },
    "referrer": "https://www.google.com/alerts?hl=us",
    "referrerPolicy": "no-referrer-when-downgrade",
    // The dev.to keyword is passed ==================== right here ∨∨∨
    "body": "params=%5Bnull%2C%5Bnull%2Cnull%2Cnull%2C%5Bnull%2C%22dev.to%22%2C%22com%22%2C%5Bnull%2C%22en%22%2C%22US%22%5D%2Cnull%2Cnull%2Cnull%2C0%2C1%5D%2Cnull%2C3%2C%5B%5Bnull%2C1%2C%22corentin%40bearer.sh%22%2C%5Bnull%2Cnull%2C10%5D%2C2%2C%22en-US%22%2Cnull%2Cnull%2Cnull%2Cnull%2Cnull%2C%220%22%2Cnull%2Cnull%2C%22AB2xxxxxxxxxxx%22%5D%5D%5D%5D",
    "method": "POST",
    "mode": "cors"
  }
);

As you might see, the dev.to keyword is passed into the body. Changing it to something else, will let us automatically add a new Google Alert 🥳

A script that creates Google Alerts in bulk

// Replace with your keywords list
var keywords = ["GitHub API", "Google Alerts API", "Dev.to API"]

function addAlert(i) {
  // Retrieve the keyword to work with
  const keyword = encodeURIComponent(keywords[i])

  // Stop the script if there's no keyword
  if (!keywords[i] || !keyword) { return; }

  console.log(`Adding ${keyword}`)

  // 1. Replace the line below with your own fetch (see Copy as fetch above)
  // 2. Replace `dev.to` with `${keyword}`
  fetch(/*...*/)

  // Exponentially delay the next request,
  // to avoid rate limit on Google.
  .then(() => { setTimeout(function() {addAlert(i+1)}, (Math.min(i || 2, 30) * 1000)) })
}

addAlert(0)

I recommend adding it as a snippet on your Google Chrome (learn how to do it right here).

Comments

[Joshua Girard]

I get an error with unexpected token '.'
debugger:///VM90496

Attached is the screenshot...dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/...
I assume you don't need a const and var for keywords? I also got an error saying keywords had been defined already. Probably user error but missing a step here...

Thanks!

[Joshua Girard]

Total NEWB - just needed to remove the ';' from after the fetch which ended the statement...that said I got a notification that it added my keywords however when I refresh I only see it added ${keyword} to my alerts....?? Is this right: 22${keyword}%22

[davideladio]

Hi there, im getting the same. the Javascript code works but it adds an alerts with the actual text '${keyword}' as the term to be looked up in the alert. I can't make the code work to extract the ${keyword} value and use it to set the alert :(

Anyone worked this out? Thanks so much!!!

[davideladio]

Fixed!!! The issue is that having the 'params' inside an string like this:

"params=hexcode${keyword}hexcode" makes the interpreter to not extract the value for ${keyword}

Instead of that in your code define 2 new var like this:
var left = "params=hexcode%22"

This var has 'all the text on the left of the actual keyword you want to add'

var right = "%22hexcode"

This var has 'all the text on the left of the actual keyword you want to add'

Now in addAlert(i) build a new params var containing the term you want to add in your google alert like this:

function addAlert(i) {
// Retrieve the keyword to work with
const keyword = encodeURIComponent(keywords[i])

//build the params var with the term to be added
var params = left + keyword + right

And all that's left is to use it (without any '$') in your fetch getting something like this:

"referrer": "google.es/alerts",
"referrerPolicy": "strict-origin-when-cross-origin",
"body": params,
"method": "POST",
"mode": "cors",
"credentials": "include"

I hope this will help anyone!!!

[Michael Lệ Moore]

I got as far as being able to create a Google alert. However, instead of creating separate alerts for every search term assigned to var 'keywords', it creates one alert comprised of each search term separated by commas, i.e. one concatenated search string. Can anyone assist? TIA.

[Michael Lệ Moore]

I figured out the issue. I was using davideladio's fix but accidentally declared the param variable with the keywords variable instead of the keyword constant. Deleting the 's' fixed the issue!

[HHBO]

What you added worked very well!
I have a ridiculous problem.
Id like to use quotation marks in my keywords and darn it- can't work it.
The regular escape character for quotation marks don't work.
var keywords=[" \"Topic One\" " , " \"Topic Two\" "]

and it gives a 404 error here-
fetch("google.com/alerts/create?x=AMJHsmW...", {
blaah blah}

Thank you!

[Thomas]

I am having the same issue without using quotation marks in my keywords. Were you able to fix this?

[bergeny]

There's a bug in the script
everytime I run it it shows the following error on this line :
.then(() => { setTimeout(function() {addAlert(i+1)}, (Math.min(i || 2, 30) * 1000)) })

Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token '.'

[bergeny]

After a trial I found the error is the ";" just before the ".then" line
You just need to remove it
Regards

[paull chaffey]

Hello, anyone have a script to add google alerts in bulk?

[davideladio]

check it out

[Thomas]

Trying this in 2023 and getting 404 errors when attempting to run the fetch() code. Anyone have ideas?