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

title: How to create a bunch of Google Alerts, in 3 minutes? published: true description: Sometimes you want to create a lot of Google Alerts. Here's how in less than 3 minutes. tags: #js #google #alerts #automatization

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:

js // 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:

```js // 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

```js // 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).