Dear Google
I do a lot of political writing, here and elsewhere. I have come to both count on Google Alerts and learn that I cannot count on Google Alerts for leads. You filter out too much information to make your product truly useful.
For example, today, I stumbled on an item that revealed that Mark Udall has collected millions of dollars from others for his campaign but is yet to contribute to it himself. That is not unimportant information. It is something that should have come in my "as it happens" Google Alert. Worse, it has now been reported a second time in another blog and still hasn't made Google Alerts. It will be interesting to see if this mention makes Google Alerts.
I happened to find that tidbit when I went to the site to create a link for another essay I was writing and decided to read an article entitled "Some candidates look for free ride." That sounded interesting, but it didn't suggest that Mark Udall would be mentioned. If not for the title, I would have missed information that you should have provided to me.
This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened. It might have happened because this item only mentioned Mark Udall's name once. I frequently find items that I should have seen but didn't, probably because the Alert subject was mentioned only once in the item. One mention should be enough to trigger an alert but often isn't.
Others claim that you ignore sites which try to attract attention by using link material repeatedly. While I do not want to see a site that just publishes a list of Congressmen, for example. I do want to see the entries where the writer is making a legitimate argument and lists people as a part of that argument.
Right now, you are deciding what sites and what entries I will see. I'd like to have more control over that. Have you thought about doing an "Alerts except" service where the user chooses what sites he doesn't want to see, but sees everything else, even multiple entries from the same site?
Sometimes I get the impression that Google Alerts goes out of its way to avoid forwarding anything critical in an alert, at least on certain subjects. I consider the Bill Ritter daily alert almost useless in that regard. The Wilderness Society daily alert falls in that category, too. I get the impression that you are moving the Mark Udall Alert in that direction as well. I certainly don't want all critical entries, but I also don't want to get the impression day after day that no one has anything uncomfortable to say about people and organizations when I know that not to be the case.
For those who wouldn't want to use the "Alerts except" feature that I proposed above, I think the right balance on almost any subject that you care to pick is about 25% negative and 75% positive. Once you approach 100% in either direction, your product becomes much less useful to one segment of the population or another.
Your product would be much more useful to me if you worked toward the goals I suggest. Thanks for your time.
I'd love to actually send this to you folks, but I can't figure out how or where to send it.
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