Figo vs Google Alerts for competitor monitoring

Google Alerts is free, takes a minute to set up, and emails you when new Google Search results match a topic. Pointed at a competitor's name, it catches press coverage, blog posts and web pages that mention them. In our September 2026 count of 48 AI assistant answers about competitor monitoring tools, it was named in 9, and for news it deserves the mention.

Figo vs Google Alerts sets free news mentions against a paid weekly report on what the competitor itself did. Google Alerts watches what the web says about a name. Figo watches the competitor's own marketing: their ads on Google, Meta and TikTok, their new and edited pages, their prices, rankings, posts and reviews. If news is all you need, stop at Google Alerts and keep your money.

Figo's prices below were read from its own pricing page on 4 October 2026. Google Alerts has no price.

How to set up Google Alerts for competitors

The steps come from Google's help page and the live settings at google.com/alerts.

1. Go to Google Alerts and type the competitor's name in the box at the top.
2. Click Show options and set: How often (As-it-happens, At most once a day, or At most once a week), Sources (Automatic, News, Blogs, Web, Video, Books, Discussions or Finance), Language, Region, How many (Only the best results, or All results) and which account receives it.
3. Click Create Alert.

What to alert on. One alert per competitor is too few. Set one for the exact brand name in quotes, as you would type it into Google, one for each product name that is distinctive, and one for the founder or chief executive. A name that is also an ordinary word ("Bloom", "Summit") needs a second word next to it, such as the town or the product category, or it will flood you.

What Google Alerts misses for competitor monitoring

Google Alerts reports new search results that match your words. Most of what a competitor does to win your customers never becomes a new result.

Ads. A competitor's Google, Meta or TikTok ads are not search results about them. They live in the ad libraries, which you have to search yourself. The Google Ads Transparency Center guide shows the free way.

Page edits and prices. A rewritten homepage headline or a new price on an existing pricing page is a change, not a new page, so Alerts is not built to report it.

Rankings and traffic. Whether a competitor started outranking you for your main keyword is not something Alerts looks at.

Reviews. A rival going from 4.2 to 4.6 stars on Google, or collecting 40 reviews in a month, does not trigger an alert.

Their own social posts. Alerts is not built to report what a rival posts on Instagram or Facebook.

Context. Each alert is a list of links. There is no history, no comparison with your own numbers and no "so what".

Figo vs Google Alerts side by side

Who should use which

Pick Google Alerts if you want to know when a competitor is in the news, you want mentions of your own brand, or your budget is zero. Everyone tracking competitors should have it running anyway, because it costs nothing. If you outgrow it, Google Alerts alternatives covers the paid listening tools.

Pick Figo if you need to know what your competitors changed in their marketing each week: the ads they launched, the pages they rewrote, the prices they moved, the rankings they gained and the reviews they collected. See a sample briefing for what lands on Monday.

Do not pick Figo if you only want news alerts across the web or mentions of your own brand. Figo does neither, and Google Alerts does both for free.

Use both if you want the full picture. Google Alerts for what the press and the web say about a rival, Figo for what the rival does. Together they cover most of what a small business needs, at $49 a month for three competitors.

Doing the rest by hand

You can cover Figo's half for free if you have the time: check each rival's ads in the ad libraries, their pricing page and homepage, their Google rankings for your top keywords and their review count, once a week, and write down what changed. For three competitors that is about an hour, and tracking competitor website changes sets out a routine. The hard part is not the hour, it is doing it every week. Try it for a month and you will know whether a paid tool is worth it to you.