Help
Alerts
We tell you when your site is down, SSL is about to expire, or keywords/traffic drop.
Steps
- 1
Your site is checked every 5 minutes; after two failed checks in a row you get an e-mail right away.
- 2
You're warned 14, 7 and 1 days before your SSL certificate expires.
- 3
If tracked keywords drop 5+ places or traffic falls 30%+, you get a morning alert.
- 4
See all alerts via the bell icon; turn e-mails off on the "Alerts" page.
Why it matters
When your site stops loading overnight, an SSL certificate runs out or a keyword quietly drops ten places, a customer often notices before you do. Alerts close that gap: you do not have to watch everything all the time, and you hear about it when something real happens. Small wobbles will not bother you; an alert only comes when a threshold is crossed, and it is not repeated for the same event.
If you get stuck
If alert e-mails are not arriving, look in your spam folder first. Then check in Notification settings that "Instant alerts" is on; e-mails only go to the account owner and admins, while alerts still show in the bell. No alert does not mean nothing happened: a rank alert needs two measurements, and a traffic alert needs at least 5 days of Search Console data in both weeks.
Frequently asked questions
- Will I get an alert when a keyword moves a few places?
- No. An alert comes when a tracked keyword falls 5 or more places or leaves the top 10. If both the old and the new rank are beyond 30, the move does not count, because a few places there is noise. The check runs every morning at 08:00.
- My site opens fine but I got a "down" alert. Why?
- Your site is checked every 5 minutes, and an alert is sent when two checks in a row fail. A short hosting outage or a busy moment can trigger it. When the site is back you also get a "back up" e-mail with how many minutes it was unreachable; you do not have to report anything.
- What is the traffic alert based on?
- Clicks from Google over the last 7 days are compared with the 7 days before; as Search Console data arrives late, the last 3 days are left out. If the drop is 30% or more and the earlier week had at least 50 clicks, you get an alert. No second alert for the same drop comes within 14 days.
- Can I turn alert e-mails off, and who receives them?
- Yes. Turn "Instant alerts" off in Notification settings, or use the link at the bottom of any alert e-mail. E-mails only go to the account owner and admins. Even when they are off, alerts keep showing in the bell. The weekly digest and the monthly report switch on and off separately.
Read next
- Rank finder and keyword trackingSee where you rank on Google for a keyword instantly; track important keywords daily.
- Competitor tracking and analysisAdd a competitor; hear about their new pages and changes, and see the keywords you are missing.
- Reading the dashboardWhat the cards, the health score and the "What happened this week?" section on your dashboard mean, and how to read them.
- Inviting a teammateYour agency or colleagues can see the same sites with their own Google accounts.
Still stuck? Contact us