How to track the best Black Friday deals with Google Alerts

Black Friday is set to be the biggest one yet, with online retailers, such as Amazon, slashing the prices of hundreds of products.

All of these tumbling prices across numerous stores (both online and on the high street) means it can be sometimes overwhelming when trying to keep up with all the best Black Friday deals. However, by using the free Google Alerts service, you can get the search giant to do all the hard work for you.

Google Alerts will email you when it finds new content on the internet that includes a term you’ve specified, so when all the Black Friday deals start landing you can simply check your inbox to make sure you’re not missing out on any amazing offers. 

In fact, it can even give you a competitive advantage on Black Friday, as you may find out about deals before the majority of shoppers discover them.

How to set up Google Alerts to track Black Friday deals 

First of all, head over to the Google Alerts website. In the ‘Create an alert about’ field, type in the phrases that you want Google to tell you about when a new web page is created which matches your criteria.

So, if you were looking for Black Friday deals on the new PlayStation 4 Slim, enter in “Black Friday, PlayStation 4 Slim, Deals” into the text box, without the quotation marks but with the commas, as these separate each search query.

An alert preview should appear below, and here you can make sure that your terms are correct and you’re going to get alerts for the deals you’re interested in. If you’re signed in to Google, then you’ll see your account details as well, which means Google Alerts will send news on Black Friday deals to your Gmail account.

If you’re not signed in, or you don’t have an account, you can enter in your email address. Next, click ‘Show options’. 

From here you can set how often you want these alerts to be sent to you. For Black Friday itself, you should choose ‘As-it-happens’ to get alerted as soon as a deal is posted.

Region is another important option, as you only want to get results from the region you’re in, otherwise you’ll be tormenting yourself with deals from countries you can’t buy from.

Once you’re happy with your selection, click ‘Create Alert’. You can create as many alerts as you want, and you’ll get the best Black Friday deals sent straight to your inbox.

Matt Hanson
Managing Editor, Core Tech

Matt is TechRadar's Managing Editor for Core Tech, looking after computing and mobile technology. Having written for a number of publications such as PC Plus, PC Format, T3 and Linux Format, there's no aspect of technology that Matt isn't passionate about, especially computing and PC gaming. Ever since he got an Amiga A500+ for Christmas in 1991, he's loved using (and playing on) computers, and will talk endlessly about how The Secret of Monkey Island is the best game ever made.