Google Alerts RSS Feed (Get URL For Original Story)

Hi there ​@deeppurplepodcast! 👋

With the RSS by Zapier triggers the Link field should usually provide a link to the original source of the RSS feed item. But sounds like you might be using the Google Alerts RSS URL and that’s providing a redirect link instead of the direct link to the original story. Am I understanding that correctly?

If so, then I’d have thought that the redirect link it provides would include the original story URL after the “https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=” part. In which case, you could use a Text > Split Text (Formatter by Zapier) action to extract the direct link to the original story from the URL and use that to post the link. You can learn more about how to use that type of action here: Use Formatter to split text in Zaps

Can you give that a try and let me know if that works?

Hello ​@deeppurplepodcast 

 

Yep this is a Google Alerts RSS quirk. The https://www.google.com/url?... link is a redirect/tracking URL, not the real article link.

In Zapier, the easiest fix is to add a step after the RSS trigger to resolve the redirect, then use the final URL in your post.

Use Webhooks by Zapier → GET with the RSS link, then grab the final URL from the response headers (usually Location) and map that into your posting step.

Dr. Tanvi Sachar
Monday Certified Partner, Tuesday Wizard

Thank you so much for the replies! I’ve been playing around with it but still think I’m just a little unclear on exactly how to make this work with webhooks. I’m not seeing anything named “Location.”

My zap is laid out to take multiple Google alerts and put them into one RSS feed.

Then (I suppose the step I’m stuck on) I want to extract the original article URL to post.

Attached is a rough idea of what I’m trying to do. Thanks again!