Media monitoring tracks where a phrase you watch in gas has appeared in Czech online media, typically the name of your brand, destination or product. We call every occurrence found a mention. This article describes where you read mentions: the Overview dashboard, the table of mentions below it, the detail of a monitored phrase and the Media overview page. Creating and editing monitored phrases is described in the article Managing monitored phrases.
Before you start
Media monitoring is a paid part of the plan. If you do not see Media monitoring in the left menu, the customer account does not have it in its plan. To extend it, write through the contact form.
There are three pages under it in the menu:
- Overview: a dashboard with graphs and with a table of mentions from all monitored phrases for the selected period.
- Phrase list: monitored phrases and a starting point to their detail.
- Media overview: a list of websites that gas reads articles from.
Every member of the customer account can view mentions, including the Viewer role. Adding an email subscription or creating a copy of a phrase is available to the Administrator and User roles.
For there to be anything to read, at least one monitored phrase has to exist and the selected period has to overlap with the period it was measured in.
The Overview dashboard
Media monitoring → Overview is the opening screen of the whole section. The page header contains controls that apply both to the graphs and to the table below them:
- period selection (Last 7 days, Last 28 days, Last month, Custom range and others),
- the graph breakdown (Day, Week, Month, Quarter, Year),
- the graph type switch,
- the Refresh button, which loads the numbers again.
By default the dashboard shows two graphs, Publisher mentions and Article mentions. The three-dot button in the top right offers Add widget, Edit layout (moving the tiles with the mouse) and Reset to default layout. gas remembers the layout for your user account and for the given customer account, so you will see it even after logging in on another computer.
What each number means
The graphs count all monitored phrases of the customer account together and take into account only mentions whose article was published in the selected period.
| Number | What it means |
|---|---|
| Mentions | every occurrence found, including those you have hidden and including copies of the same article |
| Article mentions | the number of articles without hidden occurrences and without copies; this number best answers the question of how many times you were written about |
| Publisher mentions | the number of different media outlets that mentioned the phrase in the selected period, again without hidden ones and without copies |
When the Mentions number is higher than Article mentions, the difference is made up of hidden mentions and copies of the same article. This is not an error.
The list of mentions
Below the graphs there is a table of mentions. On the Overview page it contains mentions from all monitored phrases and is limited by the selected period. On the detail of a single phrase it contains only that phrase's mentions and is not limited by the period.
| Column | What it contains |
|---|---|
| Monitoring | the name of the monitored phrase the mention belongs to; clicking it opens its detail (this column is only on the Overview page) |
| URL Address | the domain of the medium, for example idnes.cz; clicking it opens the original article in a new browser tab |
| Excerpt | the part of the article text where the searched phrase appeared; the phrase itself is highlighted in colour in the excerpt |
| Article publication time | the date and time the article was published; the table is sorted by this column from the start, newest first |
| hidden | an eye button you use to hide a mention or show it again |
Sorting and filtering
Clicking a column name sorts the table, clicking again reverses the order. You can sort by the URL Address, Excerpt and Article publication time columns, but not by the Monitoring column.
The period is set at the top in the page header, not in the table. Only one column has its own filter, hidden: in its menu you choose hidden or visible and the table shows only the matching rows.
Above the table there are also the buttons Export CSV, Export Excel, Print, Columns (turning columns on and off), Enter fullscreen and Table view settings. Export and print are offered on a computer, not on a phone. Below the table you switch pages and set the number of rows per page.
How to get to the original article
In the URL Address column click the domain name or the arrow icon next to it. The article opens on the medium's website in a new browser tab, gas does not display or store it. Some media offer content only to subscribers, in which case you will see a subscription prompt on their website. The excerpt in the table stays readable even then.
Hiding a mention
When the phrase matched a different meaning or you do not want to count the mention, click the crossed-out eye button in the hidden column. That marks the row as hidden:
- it stops being counted in the Article mentions and Publisher mentions numbers on the dashboard, on the phrase detail and in the Phrase list,
- it stays in the Mentions number,
- it does not disappear from the table, you still see it and you can bring it back with the same button (now showing an eye),
- hiding has no effect on email alerts.
Any member of the customer account can hide a mention and show it again, and the change applies to everyone who sees the account.
Detail of a monitored phrase
You get to the detail by clicking the phrase name in the Phrase list or in the Monitoring column in the table of mentions. There is no separate detail of a single mention in gas, a mention leads straight to the article on the medium's website.
The detail shows:
- Name, Phrase and Excluded phrases (when none are set, it says Not set),
- Start date, End date and Measurement duration,
- Last recalculation, that is when gas last compared the phrase with the articles it had loaded; for a newly created phrase it says Never,
- Email subscriptions, that is the addresses that receive alerts about new mentions; confirmed addresses have a bold badge, unconfirmed ones a lighter badge,
- two numbers, Article mentions and Publisher mentions, calculated for the whole measurement period.
In the top right there are buttons for adding an email address and for creating a copy of the phrase. The Administrator and User roles see them.
Below that there is a table of mentions for this phrase only, with the same columns as on the dashboard and without a period limit.
Media overview
Media monitoring → Media overview is a list of websites that gas goes through regularly. It is shared across the whole application, it is not a list of media that write about you.
| Column | What it means |
|---|---|
| Name | the name of the medium |
| URL Address | a link to its home page, opens in a new browser tab |
| Total articles | how many articles from this medium gas has loaded in total |
| Articles in 24 hours | how many articles from this medium gas loaded in the last day |
Both numbers concern all articles of the given medium, not mentions of your brand. They serve as a check that monitoring of the medium works: a zero in the Articles in 24 hours column for a website that normally publishes means nothing is currently coming in from it. The period selection in the page header does not change these numbers.
You cannot tell from this page which medium writes about you the most. You find that out from the list of mentions: sort it by clicking the URL Address column and go through which domains repeat most often. How many different media wrote about you is summed up by the Publisher mentions number. This knowledge is useful when planning PR (who to approach, who to send a press release to) and when evaluating whether your reach stays with the same circle of websites or is expanding.
When a medium is missing from the list
The Request to add a source button above the table opens a form with a single field, URL Address. Fill in the website address and click Send request. The request arrives by email at Good Agency and once approved the website is added to the list of monitored media. After sending you will see the confirmation "The request to add a publisher was sent successfully.", gas itself does not inform you about the outcome of the review.
Procedure: how to go through new mentions
- In the left menu open Media monitoring → Overview.
- In the page header select a period, for example Last 7 days.
- Read the numbers in the graphs: Article mentions tells you how many times you were written about, Publisher mentions in how many different media.
- Scroll down to the table below the graphs and go through the rows from the top, they are sorted from the newest article.
- On the row you are interested in click the link in the URL Address column. The article opens in a new browser tab.
- Hide mentions that are not related to you with the crossed-out eye button in the hidden column.
- If you want to work with a single phrase only, click its name in the Monitoring column and continue on its detail.
What happens next
gas loads new articles from the media continuously and recalculates mentions roughly every few minutes. A new mention therefore usually appears in the table within tens of minutes of the article being published. With some websites it takes longer, because they offer a new article for download with a delay.
When the recalculation last ran is shown by the Last recalculation value on the phrase detail.
The numbers on the dashboard and on the phrase detail are calculated at the moment of display, so hiding a mention takes effect right after you refresh the page with the Refresh button. The numbers in the Phrase list are stored during recalculation, so they will only match after the next recalculation.
Common problems
The dashboard and the table are empty even though we have monitoring
Most often a different period is selected than the one the phrase ran in. Mentions are ordered by the article publication date, so when you look at days when no measurement was running, nothing is shown. Switch to a longer period at the top, for example Last 90 days, and on the phrase detail check the Start date and End date values.
The table shows No rows to display
Besides the period, the cause is often the filter in the hidden column, set for example to hidden. Open the column menu and clear the filter. With a freshly created phrase the reason can also be that the first recalculation has not run yet: on the phrase detail Last recalculation then shows Never. Wait a few minutes and refresh the page.
A phrase disappeared from the Phrase list
The Phrase list shows only phrases whose measurement period reaches into the selected period. A phrase with an End date in the past therefore does not appear when you look at the last week. Switch the period to Custom range and select days when the measurement was running.
A mention has no medium name next to the link
Only the arrow icon remains in the URL Address column. It means that the medium is no longer in the current list of monitored sources. The mention is valid and the link to the article still works.
The link to the article leads nowhere or reports an error
The article has disappeared from the website in the meantime, moved to another address, or is available to subscribers only. gas does not store article content for display, it keeps only the excerpt in the table. Try to find the article on the medium's website using the text of the excerpt.
I see the same article in the list several times
There are three possible causes:
- The same medium published an article with the same headline at two addresses. gas marks the second occurrence as a copy, does not count it in the Article mentions number, but does show it in the table.
- More media picked up the news. Those are not copies, each medium is a separate mention. You can tell by the different domains in the URL Address column.
- One article matches several monitored phrases. On the Overview page it then appears once for each phrase, the Monitoring column tells them apart.
Hide the rows you do not want to see with the button in the hidden column. Copies are already excluded from the Article mentions and Publisher mentions numbers.
I hid a mention and it is still in the table
Hiding does not delete a mention or remove it from the listing, it only excludes it from the Article mentions and Publisher mentions numbers. If you want a tidy table, use the filter in the hidden column and choose visible.
A hidden mention arrived in an email alert
Hiding affects the numbers and the table in the application, not the sending of emails. Unsubscribe an address that should not receive alerts in the subscription settings on the phrase detail.
The numbers on the dashboard do not match the numbers in the Phrase list
The dashboard counts only mentions from articles published in the selected period, whereas the numbers in the Phrase list and on the phrase detail apply to the whole measurement period. The difference is therefore expected. The second reason is timing: the numbers in the Phrase list are stored during recalculation, whereas the dashboard calculates them at the moment of display.
The Total articles column is empty
For ordinary accounts the Total articles column stays empty. You can tell whether articles are coming in from a medium by the Articles in 24 hours column.
Changing the period on the Media overview page changes nothing
That is how it should be. The media table works with fixed values (in total and for the last 24 hours) and does not follow the period selection. The period affects the Overview dashboard and the Phrase list.
A mention is in a foreign language
gas goes through Czech online websites. A foreign-language text appears in the excerpt when a Czech website also publishes a foreign-language version or quotes a foreign source. Individual cases can simply be hidden. If they repeat, add a word that regularly appears in them to the Exclude phrases field of the phrase; the procedure is described in the article Managing monitored phrases.
The mentions concern a different meaning of the word than we are looking for
The phrase is searched in the headline, in the lead and in the body of the article, so with a name that also has a common meaning you will also match articles that are not related to you. A more precise phrase (more words), a filled-in Exclude phrases field and turning off the By root option, which otherwise also searches other forms of the word, all help. Phrases are edited in Media monitoring → Phrase list.
The number of mentions is not growing
On the phrase detail check Last recalculation. If it is very old or shows Never, write through the contact form. If the recalculation is running and mentions still are not growing, the phrase is usually worded too narrowly, or the media did not write about you in that period.
I do not see the buttons for the email subscription and for copying a phrase
These actions are available to the Administrator and User roles. With the Viewer role you can read the data but cannot change the settings. Ask the administrator of the customer account to change your role.
Export and print are missing on the phone
Export to CSV and Excel and printing the table are available on a computer. On a phone you can go through the mentions, but for export open gas on a larger screen.