What makes a custom alert worth setting up?
Most teams have a short list of things they check by hand in case something happened. A competitor's pricing page. A Slack channel where customers post feedback. A Reddit search for your product category. The weekly signup number. Each check takes a minute, but together they eat part of every day, and most of the time nothing has changed.
Alerts are supposed to fix that, but the usual tools only solve half the problem. Google Alerts, page-change monitors, and keyword trackers are good at noticing that something is different. They can't tell whether the difference matters. A page monitor flags a competitor's pricing page every time a cookie banner changes. A keyword alert on "onboarding" fires on every message that uses the word, including the ones about onboarding a new hire. After a few weeks of noise, people stop reading the alerts and go back to checking by hand.
A useful custom alert needs two things:
- Where to look. That's a specific page, a channel, a search, or a number in a tool you use.
- What counts as worth knowing. That's a price that changed, a customer complaining about a specific feature, or signups falling well below last week's average.
The second part is a judgment call, and that's why it's work an AI agent does well. An agent can read what it finds the way you would, hold it against what you asked for, and stay quiet when nothing qualifies. Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. Part of that work is keeping watch on the things your team cares about and telling you when one of them moves.
How Kite sets up custom alerts for anything you track
Kite starts with your request in plain words. You say what you want to know about, and Kite turns that into a standing watch: the thing it will check, the condition that counts as a hit, and how often it checks. Before saving the watch, it looks at what it already knows about your company, such as your competitors and the pages your site compares itself against, and checks whether a watch you already have covers the request.
From then on, Kite checks on a schedule. Each check reads the page, channel, search, or number as it stands, compares what it finds with your request, and either stays quiet or tells you what it found, where it found it, and why it matches. You can see, change, pause, or stop any watch by asking.
- Describe the alert in one sentence
- Get alerts when a web page changes
- Get told when someone in a Slack channel mentions a topic
- Get alerts for new search results on a topic
- Get alerts when your own numbers move
- Hear about it where you already work
- Keep track of what Kite is watching
Describe the alert in one sentence
Kite sets up an alert from a sentence that starts with "Tell me when." You don't fill in a form or pick from a list of triggers. These all work:
- "Tell me when Northwind changes the price of its Team plan."
- "Tell me when someone in #customer-feedback complains about onboarding."
- "Tell me when a new Reddit or Hacker News post compares us with Fieldwork."
- "Tell me if daily signups in PostHog fall more than 25% below last week's average."
Kite chooses the narrowest version of the watch that still covers what you asked for. A request to hear about "Northwind news" becomes a watch for news naming Northwind, not for news about your whole market. A narrow watch can be widened later. A broad one costs you attention every time it fires, which is how most alerts end up ignored.
If the request leaves something out, Kite asks before saving the watch. "Tell me when our competitors launch something" needs names, so Kite suggests the competitors in your team's knowledge base and lets you confirm them. "Tell me when this page changes" needs to know which part matters, so Kite asks which values on the page you care about.
Get alerts when a web page changes
Kite can watch a specific web page for a change in a value you care about, such as a price, a plan name, a headline, or a search position. When you set up the watch, Kite reads the page and records the current value and the date it saw it. Each later check compares the page with that value.
Say you ask Kite to tell you when Northwind changes the price of its Team plan. Kite opens Northwind's pricing page and notes that the Team plan is $49 a month as of today. If a later check shows $59, Kite tells you the old price, the new one, and the link. If the only change is a new footer or a reworded testimonial, Kite stays quiet.
Pages that list dated items, such as a blog, a changelog, or a press page, work a little differently. For those, Kite looks for items posted after its last check. "Tell me when Northwind publishes a new changelog entry about integrations" fires on a new entry that matches, not on every new entry.
Kite reads pages the way a visitor who isn't signed in would see them. If the page you name is behind a login, such as a dashboard in one of your tools, Kite says so and offers to watch that data through the tool itself.
For watches that stay with one competitor, see Track competitors' pricing changes Coming soon .
Get told when someone in a Slack channel mentions a topic
Kite can watch a channel in your team's Slack workspace and tell you when a message matches the topic you care about. This is useful for channels that move too fast to read in full, such as a customer-feedback channel, a sales channel where reps paste call notes, or a shared channel with a partner.
Each check reads the messages posted since the last one and judges them against your request. Because Kite reads the message rather than matching a keyword, "Tell me when someone in #customer-feedback complains about onboarding" catches "it took us three days to get the first report working," even though the message never says "onboarding." It also skips "we're onboarding a new sales rep next week." When nothing new has been posted, the check ends there.
Get alerts for new search results on a topic
Kite can run a web search on a schedule and tell you when new results match your request. You can search the whole web or limit the watch to particular sites, such as reddit.com, news.ycombinator.com, or g2.com.
Each check looks for items dated after the previous check, such as a new post, article, review, or discussion, and judges each one against what you asked for. "Tell me when a new Reddit or Hacker News post compares us with Fieldwork" fires on a thread asking which of the two products to pick. It doesn't fire on a post that mentions Fieldwork's funding round.
Kite also has ready-made watches for the searches marketing teams ask for most often. You name the companies, products, or terms, and Kite searches for:
- mentions of your brand or your prospects
- news coverage naming the terms you choose
- launch and release announcements from competitors
- new public reviews that mention you or a competitor
For responding to news once Kite finds it, see Find news stories you can respond to Coming soon . For a fuller view of what people say about your company, see Monitor brand reputation and public mentions.
Get alerts when your own numbers move
Kite can watch your own marketing numbers and tell you when one moves past a point you choose. A watch on a daily number, such as traffic or signups, compares each day with either the day before or the average of the previous seven days, and fires when the change crosses your threshold.
Kite watches these numbers without anything to connect:
- Website traffic on a site Kite hosts. When you ask for a traffic alert without naming a threshold, Kite starts with an alert for daily visitors falling 25% below the previous week's average and tells you so, so you can tighten or loosen it.
- Your search rankings. Kite can tell you when a tracked keyword drops a set number of places or falls off the first page of Google.
- Your visibility in AI answers. For the questions Kite tracks across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude, it can tell you when your share of answers moves by a set number of points from the week before.
For numbers that live in your other tools, connect the tool and Kite watches it there. It can watch PostHog, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, HubSpot, and Stripe. Kite sets up the query that pulls the number, such as daily signups from PostHog or new paid subscriptions from Stripe, and holds each day's number to your threshold. It can also watch records in those tools against a request in words, such as "Tell me when a deal over $20,000 moves to closed won in HubSpot."
Kite compares against the day before and the previous seven days because those comparisons are reliable on a daily number. If you ask for a comparison with the same week last year, Kite tells you which comparisons it can watch and lets you pick.
For more on traffic alerts, see Get alerts when website traffic drops Coming soon .
Hear about it where you already work
Kite sends each alert where you'll see it and includes what it found, the link, and why it matches your request. The destination depends on how your team works with Kite:
- In Slack. If you asked for the watch in a Slack thread, Kite replies in that thread, so the alert sits next to the conversation that started it. If the thread has been quiet for a few months, or you asked somewhere else, Kite posts in your team's Slack channel.
- By email. If your team works with Kite in the web app and hasn't added Kite to Slack, Kite emails the alert to the person who set up the watch. Replying to the email continues the conversation with Kite.
An alert is a starting point, not just a notice. Reply and ask Kite to act on it: draft a response to the Reddit thread, update your comparison page with Northwind's new price, or look into why signups fell.
Keep track of what Kite is watching
Kite keeps every watch on a list with the reason it was created, so you never have to wonder why an alert arrived. Ask "What are you watching for us?" and Kite lists each watch, what it checks, how often, and whether it has checked yet. Ask "Why are you watching Fieldwork's reviews?" and Kite tells you the reason it recorded, such as the conversation where you asked.
You manage watches the same way you set them up:
- Change what makes it fire. "Only tell me about Northwind price changes on the Team and Business plans."
- Change how often it checks. "Check that one every hour." Kite checks as often as once an hour.
- Pause or resume it. "Pause the Reddit watch until after the launch."
- Stop it. "Stop watching Fieldwork." When a person on your team pauses or stops a watch, Kite doesn't turn it back on by itself.
Some settings, such as the page or channel a watch reads, are fixed when the watch is created. To point a watch somewhere new, Kite explains that it needs to stop the old watch and set up a new one, and it does both once you agree.
Kite also suggests watches on its own. When you ask about something that keeps changing, such as a competitor or your traffic, Kite may end its answer by offering to keep watching it. For a new team, it can start a few watches itself, such as a traffic watch, a brand watch, and watches on the competitors your site compares itself with, and it says why each one exists and how to stop it. If you turn down a watch Kite offered, it doesn't offer that one again.
What you get
Alerts written as plain sentences
Each watch is a request you can read back, like "Tell me when Northwind changes the price of its Team plan," rather than a rule you have to decode.
Fewer, better alerts
Kite reads each match against your request and stays quiet when nothing qualifies, so the alerts you get are worth reading.
Alerts with context
Each one names what changed, where, and why it matches, with the link, in the Slack thread where you asked or in your email.
A list of everything Kite watches
Every watch shows what it checks, how often, and why it exists, and you can change, pause, or stop any of them by asking.
A next step on request
Reply to any alert and Kite can start the work it calls for.
How to get started
Start by telling Kite what you keep checking by hand. You might say, "Tell me when a new G2 review mentions us," or "Every time someone in #sales mentions a competitor by name, let me know."
Kite reads the request, asks about anything it needs to pin down, and tells you what it will watch, how often it will check, and where you'll hear about it. You can ask at any time whether a watch has run its first check. You don't need to set up a page monitor, search alert, or keyword rule yourself.
You can ask for watches in the Kite web app or in Slack. Watching a Slack channel requires adding Kite to your Slack workspace, and teams that use Slack get their alerts there. Teams that work in the web app get alerts by email. To watch numbers in PostHog, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, HubSpot, or Stripe, connect that account first.
If you want a summary on a fixed schedule whether or not anything changed, such as a traffic report every Monday morning, ask Kite for a scheduled report instead. A watch is for the times you only want to hear from Kite when something happens.
Integrations used for custom alerts
Kite reads public web pages and runs web searches with its own built-in tools, so most watches need nothing connected. Connections come in when the thing you want to watch, or the place you want to hear about it, lives in a tool your team already uses.
Watch Slack channels and get alerts in Slack
Watch numbers and records in your own tools
Watch product numbers such as daily signups or an event count and get told when one moves past your threshold.
Watch traffic and conversion numbers for a website Kite doesn't host.
Watch the clicks, impressions, and positions your site earns in Google search.
Watch contacts, deals, and companies, such as new deals above a certain size.
Watch subscriptions, invoices, refunds, and disputes, such as a rise in refunds compared with last week.
Common questions
How is this different from Google Alerts?
Google Alerts emails you when Google indexes a new page containing the words you chose. It doesn't read the page to decide whether it matters, and it can't watch a specific page for a price change, a Slack channel, or your own numbers. Kite reads each match against the request you wrote, stays quiet when nothing qualifies, and can watch pages, channels, and tools as well as searches. For a look at dedicated tools in this category, see The best Google Alerts alternatives for tracking anything that matters to your business Coming soon .
How often does Kite check?
Kite checks pages, channels, and searches every six hours by default, and as often as once an hour if you ask. Watches on daily numbers read the most recent complete day, so they check every six hours and pick up a finished day promptly. If you need to know sooner, Kite can also react to events your product records in PostHog, such as a new signup, as they arrive rather than at the next check.
Can Kite watch a page I have to sign in to see?
No. Kite reads pages the way a signed-out visitor sees them, so a page behind a login shows it a sign-in screen. When the page belongs to a tool Kite can connect to, such as HubSpot or Stripe, Kite watches the data through the connected account instead. For other private pages, Kite tells you it can't watch them so you aren't waiting on an alert that will never come.
Can I set up an alert for any change at all on a page?
Kite needs to know which part of the page matters, because "any change" on most pages includes rotating banners, dates, and small wording edits. If you ask for any change, Kite asks which values you care about, such as a price, a plan name, or a headline, and watches those. On pages that list dated posts, such as a blog or changelog, it watches for new items.
Do I need Slack to use custom alerts?
You can set up and receive most alerts without Slack. Teams that work in the Kite web app get alerts by email, and replying to the email continues the conversation with Kite. Watching a Slack channel does require adding Kite to Slack, and once you do, alerts arrive in the Slack thread where you asked for them.
Does Kite ever set up alerts I didn't ask for?
Sometimes, and it always tells you why. When a new team joins, Kite can start a few watches based on what it learned during onboarding, such as your traffic, your brand name, and the competitors your website compares itself with. When you ask about something that keeps changing, it may offer a watch at the end of its answer. Every watch records the reason it exists, and you can stop any of them by asking.