Hello,
I’ve created some custom RSS feeds for various Google Alerts. I’m looking to find a way to post a link to the original story (the URL - the https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=). Is there a way to do that easily or to make the headline a link to that story as well?
Thanks for any help!
Best answer by SamB
Hi
I did some testing and I couldn’t see any “location” field output by the GET request as a separate field either. With that approach you’d still need another action to extract that information from the Text field that the Webhooks action outputs.
I had a closer look at the URLs Google supplies with their alert feeds and it looks like the redirect URL isn’t the only value that appears after “https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=”, there’s some more values after the url that get added as well. So the URL is actually within two values “https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=” and “=ga...”. So instead of the Split Text action I suggested previously, I think you’d be better off with an Extract Pattern action.
To extract a value between two values you can use a pattern like (?<=x)(.*?)(?=y) - you’d need to swap the x and y to be the values that come before and after the value you’re wanting to extract.
For example, if you set up the Formatter action using the pattern (?<=t&url=)(.*?)(?=&ct=ga) like so:
That would extract the destination URL from the URL in the Link field, which should get you the link to the original source of the feed item:
In my case the RSS feed item I tested with was an alert for a YouTube video but if your alerts are limited to articles it would be extracting the article link rather than a video link.
Hope that helps. If you get stuck at all on that just let me know!
+11Hi there
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?
+5Hello
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
Hello
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!
+11Hi
I did some testing and I couldn’t see any “location” field output by the GET request as a separate field either. With that approach you’d still need another action to extract that information from the Text field that the Webhooks action outputs.
I had a closer look at the URLs Google supplies with their alert feeds and it looks like the redirect URL isn’t the only value that appears after “https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=”, there’s some more values after the url that get added as well. So the URL is actually within two values “https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=” and “=ga...”. So instead of the Split Text action I suggested previously, I think you’d be better off with an Extract Pattern action.
To extract a value between two values you can use a pattern like (?<=x)(.*?)(?=y) - you’d need to swap the x and y to be the values that come before and after the value you’re wanting to extract.
For example, if you set up the Formatter action using the pattern (?<=t&url=)(.*?)(?=&ct=ga) like so:
That would extract the destination URL from the URL in the Link field, which should get you the link to the original source of the feed item:
In my case the RSS feed item I tested with was an alert for a YouTube video but if your alerts are limited to articles it would be extracting the article link rather than a video link.
Hope that helps. If you get stuck at all on that just let me know!
Wow! That works EXACTLY how I was hoping! Thank you so much for your help! I learned a lot!
+11Yay! So glad that did the trick
Sounds like you’re all set for now, but feel free to reach back out if there’s anything else we can help with.
In the meantime, happy Zapping! 😁⚡
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