Require exact matches for Google Alerts?

Question

I've got a Google ego-Alert set up for "billpg". It keeps finding alerts for "Bill Page". Is there any way, please, to have an alert for exactly billpg and not Bill Page who I'm getting throughly sick of hearing about?

Answer 1

Google Alerts use the same search syntax as when you use Google Search. So if you don't want certain words or phrases appearing, you can exclude them with the minus (-) operator.

Here's an example that alerts to traffic, but excludes those that concern safety:

Search query: traffic -safety

To exclude a phrase, wrap it around quotes. In your case it would be:

Search query: billpg -"bill page"

Answer 2

If you want results about billpg and not Bill Page, change your query to "billpg" (in quotes). Putting a word in quotes forces it to be an exact match.