What News Alerts Are
A news alert is a saved search query that runs automatically on our server schedule.
When new press releases are distributed that match your query, you receive
an email digest containing the matching announcements — headline, issuing company,
summary excerpt, and a direct link.
Unlike social media notifications where the algorithm is opaque, our alerts use the
exact same transparent Elasticsearch query infrastructure as our live platform search.
There is no separate, undisclosed ranking model for alerts.
An alert is simply an automated query against our live news wire. If a press release matches your target keywords in search, it lands in your inbox digest. No noise, no algorithmic filtering.
Three Types of Alerts
You can set alerts based on three different criteria, and combine them freely:
🔍 Keyword & Competitor Alert
Matches press releases where your keyword appears in the headline, summary, tags, or industry fields.
Use specific, domain-appropriate terms or competitor brand names. "Fintech" will
return broad daily results; "Stripe product launch" will return targeted, highly relevant updates.
📂 Industry Sector Alert
Matches all news distributed within a specific sector — Healthcare, Technology, Real Estate, etc.
This is an exact match on our internal category taxonomy. Use this when you want comprehensive
market awareness of a specific business vertical.
🏢 Company Alert
Matches announcements explicitly issued by a specific publisher or organization.
Perfect for investors or journalists tracking the official communications of a specific brand.
The Alert Engine — What Happens Each Run
The alert system runs as an automated cron job. Here is the sequence of
operations on each run:
1
Fetch active alerts
The system queries the active alert database for users scheduled to receive a daily or weekly digest since their last run timestamp.
2
Time-bounded query
For each alert, we query the live wire index for announcements with status=published AND published_date >= last_triggered. This guarantees no duplicate emails.
3
Apply multi-match scoring
Your keyword runs through the same multi_match query as live search — across headlines (^3), summaries (^2), and keywords (^1).
4
Score and sort
Matching releases are sorted by BM25 relevance score, with publication date as the tiebreaker. Top 20 results are appended to your digest.
5
Compile user digest
We compile all matching queries into a single, clean email digest. This prevents inbox flooding if multiple alerts trigger simultaneously.
6
Deliver & reset
The email is delivered via our enterprise SMTP service, and the alert timestamp is reset. If no news matched, no email is sent.
The core Elasticsearch query for a keyword alert looks like this:
# Alert query — news since last run matching keyword
{
"query": {
"bool": {
"must": [
{
"multi_match": {
"query": "[alert keyword]",
"fields": ["headline^3", "summary^2", "keywords^1", "industry^1"]
}
}
],
"filter": [
{ "term": { "status": "published" } },
{ "range": { "published_date": { "gte": "[last_triggered]" } } }
]
}
},
"sort": [{ "_score": { "order": "desc" } }, { "published_date": { "order": "desc" } }],
"size": 20
}
Delivery Schedule
📅
Daily Digest
Runs every day at 07:00 UTC. Covers news distributed in the past 24 hours. Sent only if matches exist.
📆
Weekly Digest
Runs every Monday at 07:00 UTC. Covers news distributed in the past 7 days. Sent only if matches exist.
🏢
Publisher Digest
Publishers receive a separate automated report detailing the ROI metrics (views/downloads) of their distributed releases.
Setting Up Your Alerts
Alerts are available to both publisher and subscriber accounts. Go to
News Alerts
from your dashboard. For each alert:
1
Enter your target keyword, competitor name, or select an industry sector.
2
Choose daily or weekly frequency. We recommend daily for volatile sectors like Finance or Tech.
3
Click "Add Alert". The alert takes effect immediately.
4
Manage, pause, or delete alerts at any time from your dashboard. Free plans allow up to 10 active alerts.
Track the market with precision.
Set up keyword, industry, and competitor alerts — free for all registered users.
How Article Alerts Work
Wire
