How to parse the data from Google Alerts?

When you create the alert, set the "Deliver To" to "Feed" and then you can consume the feed XML as you would any other feed. This is much easier to parse and digest into a database.

class googleAlerts{
    public function createAlert($alert){
        $USERNAME = 'XXXXXX@gmail.com';
        $PASSWORD = 'YYYYYY';
        $COOKIEFILE = 'cookies.txt';

        $ch = curl_init();
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 30);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)");
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $COOKIEFILE);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $COOKIEFILE);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 120);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 120);

        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,
            'https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin?hl=en&service=alerts&continue=http://www.google.com/alerts/manage');
        $data = curl_exec($ch);

        $formFields = $this->getFormFields($data);

        $formFields['Email']  = $USERNAME;
        $formFields['Passwd'] = $PASSWORD;
        unset($formFields['PersistentCookie']);

        $post_string = '';
        foreach($formFields as $key => $value) {
            $post_string .= $key . '=' . urlencode($value) . '&';
        }

        $post_string = substr($post_string, 0, -1);

        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLoginAuth');
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_string);

        $result = curl_exec($ch);

        if (strpos($result, '<title>') === false) {
            return false;

        } else {
            curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://www.google.com/alerts');
            curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 0);
            curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, null);

            $result = curl_exec($ch);

            curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://www.google.com/alerts/create');
            curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 0);
            $result = curl_exec($ch);
            //var_dump($result);
            $result = $this->getFormFieldsCreate($result);
            $result['q'] = $alert;
            $result['t'] = '7';
            $result['f'] = '1';
            $result['l'] = '0';
            $result['e'] = 'feed';
            unset($result['PersistentCookie']);

            $post_string = '';
            foreach($result as $key => $value) {
                $post_string .= $key . '=' . urlencode($value) . '&';
            }

            $post_string = substr($post_string, 0, -1);
            curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_string);
            $result = curl_exec($ch);
            curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://www.google.com/alerts/manage');
            $result = curl_exec($ch);
            if (preg_match_all('%'.$alert.'(?=</a>).*?<a href=[\'"]http://www.google.com/alerts/feeds/([^\'"]+)%i', $result, $matches)) {
                return ('http://www.google.com/alerts/feeds/'.$matches[1][0]);
            } else {
                return false;
            }


        }
    }

    private function getFormFields($data)
    {
        if (preg_match('/(<form.*?id=.?gaia_loginform.*?<\/form>)/is', $data, $matches)) {
            $inputs = $this->getInputs($matches[1]);

            return $inputs;
        } else {
            die('didnt find login form');
        }
    }
    private function getFormFieldsCreate($data)
    {
        if (preg_match('/(<form.*?name=.?.*?<\/form>)/is', $data, $matches)) {
            $inputs = $this->getInputs($matches[1]);

            return $inputs;
        } else {
            die('didnt find login form1');
        }
    }


    private function getInputs($form)
    {
        $inputs = array();

        $elements = preg_match_all('/(<input[^>]+>)/is', $form, $matches);

        if ($elements > 0) {
            for($i = 0; $i < $elements; $i++) {
                $el = preg_replace('/\s{2,}/', ' ', $matches[1][$i]);

                if (preg_match('/name=(?:["\'])?([^"\'\s]*)/i', $el, $name)) {
                    $name  = $name[1];
                    $value = '';

                    if (preg_match('/value=(?:["\'])?([^"\'\s]*)/i', $el, $value)) {
                        $value = $value[1];
                    }

                    $inputs[$name] = $value;
                }
            }
        }

        return $inputs;
    }
}
$alert = new googleAlerts;
echo $alert->createAlert('YOUR ALERT');

It will return link to rss feed of your newly created alert

I found a Google Alerts API here. It's pretty minimal and I haven't tested it.