How to Find More Sweepstakes Wins with Google Alerts

No matter how often we check our sweepstakes email, our mailbox, and our voice mail, the chances are that at some point we are going to overlook a win notification. Maybe your email inbox was full and the notification bounced, or you dropped a letter while carrying it into the house and didn't notice, or some other accident of fate happened to prevent you from receiving your notice. Few things are as frustrating as to work so hard to win a sweepstake only to lose your prize because you didn't get the notification.

Using Google Alerts is a smart way to give yourself a second chance at those missed notifications. Many sweepstakes sponsors post winners lists on their website, which are then indexed by the Google Search Engine. You could do internet searches on your name and other personal information to try to find wins. However, that takes time and effort, and many sponsors say that you have to get in touch with them within a certain period of time or they'll award your prize to the next winner.

Google Alerts does the work of searching for your prize wins for you. Just set up the relevant search terms and every time Google adds a page to its index with those terms, it will send you an email to let you know about it. Google Alerts is easy to use, and can help prevent you from missing a win. Read about how to use Google Alerts to find sweepstakes wins.

However, if you use the wrong search terms, you could end up deluged with emails that are irrelevant and have nothing to do with you or your wins. To help you avoid that, I've written about the most common Google Alerts problems and how to fix them. If your Alerts aren't as successful as you'd hoped, check out this article to learn how to focus your searches and get better results.