Lately I have found that Google Alerts doesn't work anywhere near as well as it used to, say, a year or two ago. I track lots of things, and usually set them up for "as-it-happens" style alerts, which, I assume, means "instant" (as instant as instant can be, given reasonable delays for Google's bots to do their job). It used to be I'd get all sorts of hits for things in a very reasonable amount of time, hours, maybe sometimes minutes. Now, I find "as-it-happens" results sometimes take days, sometimes even weeks, before they wind up in my email.

So I am setting up an experiment. I created a Google Alert for the nonsense phrase "kaferga figa" (kuh-FER-ga FEE-ga). I want to see how long it takes for Google Alerts to alert me, "as it happens". I'm guessing a week. Let's see.

I'll report the results back as soon as Google Alerts sends me an alert.

Time now, 16:32PT on 4 Aug 2010