If you want to monitor brand mentions for free, you have probably already set up a Google Alert. Then the emails started piling up. Some days there are ten results, some days none, and most of them sit unread in a folder until you remember to check. The alert is doing its job. The problem is where the results land: an inbox, separated from everything else you look at when you run your business.
This post shows how to take two free monitoring tools you already have access to, Google Alerts and RSS feeds, and put them on a Vexlynk board as live cards that an AI agent reads with the rest of your work.
How can you monitor brand mentions for free?
Two free building blocks cover most of what a small business needs:
- Google Alerts. As of October 2026, the Google Alerts page lets you create an alert for a topic and choose how often you hear about it (as it happens, at most once a day, or at most once a week), which kinds of sources to include, the language, the region, and whether you get only the best results or all of them. Google’s help page describes getting emails whenever it finds matching results.
- RSS feeds. Many blogs, news sites and industry publications publish a feed of new articles. Following the feeds of the outlets that cover your niche is a simple way to see when they write something.
Neither costs anything and neither needs an account key. What they lack is a good place to read them, and a way to connect a mention to the rest of your business.
What does the Google Alerts card in Vexlynk show?
Vexlynk has a Google Alerts source. It reads your own Google Alert through the alert’s RSS feed. There is no sign-in and no key: you paste the feed link, and Vexlynk reads it. It is read-only. Your Google account is never connected.
The card has two tabs:
- Mentions shows how many mentions arrived this week and the latest ones grouped by day. Each has an Open link to the real article.
- Spreading shows stories that were picked up by three or more different sites, with the earliest headline, how many sites picked it up, which sites, and when it was first seen.
The Spreading tab is the useful part for a brand. One mention is noise. The same story showing up on several sites is something you probably want to know about today, whether it is good news or a problem.
Two honest details. The card starts collecting from the moment you set it up, so it shows a “Collecting since” date, and Spreading fills in as Google Alerts finds more results. And if Google Alerts is temporarily unavailable, the card says so and Vexlynk keeps retrying. Vexlynk’s privacy policy lists 30 days as the retention for Google Alerts items fetched in the cloud.
How do you set it up?
Vexlynk’s setup panel walks you through four steps:
- Go to google.com/alerts and create an alert for your keyword, for example your brand name in quotes.
- Click Show options and set Deliver to to RSS feed.
- Click Create alert.
- Click the RSS icon next to the alert, copy that link, and paste it into Vexlynk.
Vexlynk checks that the link is really a Google Alerts feed before saving it. A wrong link is refused with a message telling you to copy it again from the RSS icon. You can test it before saving; when the test can read the feed, it names the alert it found.
Where do RSS feeds fit in?
Google Alerts catches mentions of a keyword wherever Google finds them. An RSS feed is the opposite: you choose one specific outlet and see everything it publishes. The RSS source in Vexlynk turns any feed URL into a live card on the board. It needs no authentication, as the Connecting Sources guide lists.
A practical setup for a small brand:
- One Google Alert for your brand name.
- One Google Alert for your main competitor or your product category, so you see the conversation around you, not only about you.
- RSS cards for the two or three publications your customers actually read.
Keep it small at the start. Three or four cards you actually read beat fifteen you scroll past. If one alert brings back mostly irrelevant results, tighten the keyword on Google’s side, for example by adding your city or your product name, and the card follows the same alert. When a source stops being useful, disconnect it and that slot frees up immediately.
If what you want is to spot topics that keep coming up across many articles, rather than mentions of your name, that is a different job. The Web Signal Scraper source looks for topics that recur across articles and days; we covered it in trend hunting without 15 tabs.
What does the agent add?
A mention on its own rarely tells you what to do. The value comes from reading it next to everything else. Because the Google Alerts and RSS cards sit on the same board as your other sources, the agent reads them together. You can ask:
- “What were the mentions this week, and which story spread the most?”
- “Did anything mention us around the day our traffic jumped?” (with Google Analytics connected)
- “Summarise what the industry feeds published this week that matters for my next post.”
The agent answers from what is on the cards. If the answer depends on data you have not connected, it says so instead of guessing. You can also ask it about a specific article: place the link as a link card, and the agent reads the page and tells you what it read and when.
Is it really free?
Google Alerts and public RSS feeds are free to use, and neither needs a paid key. Vexlynk is the board you read them on, and it runs on a Vexlynk plan. Each Google Alerts or RSS card also counts as a connected source toward your plan’s limit. See plans for the current details.
When is Vexlynk not the right fit?
- If you need to track mentions inside social platforms, private groups or comment threads, a dedicated social listening tool is the better choice. Vexlynk reads your Google Alert and the feeds you add; it does not crawl social networks.
- If you need sentiment scoring, share-of-voice reports or coverage for a PR team, use a media monitoring service built for that.
- If all you want is an email when your name appears, Google Alerts alone already does that.
Vexlynk is worth it when you want mentions on the same screen as your revenue, traffic and tasks, and an agent that can connect them.
Set up your first alert card
Create the alert, switch its delivery to RSS, paste the link into Vexlynk, and your mentions are on the board. Try Vexlynk in your browser or download the desktop app. See every live source on the sources page and everything that ships today on the features page.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to connect my Google account to use the Google Alerts card?
No. You paste your alert’s RSS link. There is no sign-in and no key, and the source is read-only.
What does “Spreading” mean on the card?
It lists stories that three or more different sites picked up, with the earliest headline, the number of sites, which sites, and when the story was first seen. It fills in over time as Google Alerts finds more results.
Can I add any RSS feed?
Yes. The RSS source takes any feed URL and turns it into a live card. It needs no authentication.
Does Vexlynk monitor social media mentions?
Not as mention monitoring. Vexlynk’s social sources read analytics for your own Instagram, Facebook or TikTok account, not posts by other people that mention you. For social listening, use a dedicated tool.
Will the agent read the articles in my alerts?
The agent reads what is on the card: the mentions and the spreading stories. To have it read a full article, place that article’s link as a link card and ask about it.
Vexlynk
Vexlynk Team