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My alert returns too many results: how do I narrow it?
A noisy alert usually comes from a keyword that is too broad or a scope that is too wide: replace the word with a phrase.
The most common problem, and it is almost always settled in two moves.
In detail
Correct it in this order. The first two points are enough in the great majority of cases.
- Replace the broad word with a phrase.
climatbrings you back hundreds of results a week."loi climat"or"plan climat"brings you back a handful, and they are the right ones. - Rule out the two or three themes that are cluttering things up. Open your last three alert emails, spot what keeps coming back and does not concern you, and add it with a hyphen in front, in each part of the alert separated by a
;. It is the highest-yield move on this whole page. - Cut the sources you never read. If you systematically skip social media posts, untick them in Followed sources. They will remain available in the search.
- Exclude Europe if you only work on France, in the Perimeter setting. This setting does not appear if your account covers Europe only.
- Split the alert in two. An alert covering three subjects produces an unreadable email. Three alerts named by subject produce three emails you deal with in thirty seconds each.
Where to change it
Monitoring > Keywords, then the Update keyword alert icon on the row concerned. Get into the habit of going through this once a quarter: an alert created for a file that closed six months ago is pure noise.