Media monitoring searches the articles of online media for the text you enter. We call this text a phrase, and it is the only thing monitoring uses to recognise that an article is about you. Phrases are managed in the left menu under Media monitoring → Phrase list. The usefulness of the whole module depends on how you word the phrase: too general and the overview fills up with articles about someone else, too narrow and it finds nothing.
Before you start
- The module has to be part of your subscription. If you do not see Media monitoring in the left menu, you do not have access to it yet. Write through the contact form to have it added.
- Phrases can be created, copied and deleted by the Administrator and the User of the customer account. A Viewer sees the phrase list and the mentions found, but the button for adding a phrase is not shown at all and the copy and delete icons are greyed out.
- The number of phrases is limited. The Media monitoring add-on provides six phrases by default. How many you have and how many of them are used up is shown in Settings → Customer account → Subscription. Only phrases whose measurement period has not ended yet count towards the limit.
Adding a new phrase
- In the left menu open Media monitoring → Phrase list.
- Above the table on the left, click the Create monitoring button.
- The New monitoring window opens. Fill in the name, the measurement period and the search phrase. What each field means is described in the next section.
- Confirm the form with the Create monitoring button.
- The window closes and the new phrase appears in the table. The mention columns stay empty for a while, until the first evaluation runs.
What each field in the form means
Monitoring name. The name under which you will see the phrase in the list, in the detail and in e-mail alerts. It has nothing to do with the search itself, so write it for yourself (for example "Brand in the media"). It fits into 40 characters.
Assign to campaign. An optional link between the phrase and a campaign you have set up in gas. If you leave the field at Select campaign, the phrase will not belong to any campaign. The assignment is saved when the phrase is created; afterwards it is not shown in the list or in the phrase detail, and it cannot be changed on a saved phrase. If you need a different one, create a copy of the phrase.
Measure from date and Measure until date. The period in which mentions are searched for. What matters is the publication date of the article, not the date you created the phrase. Both dates are required.
Search phrase. The text itself that is searched for in articles. You enter one phrase, not a list of variants. It fits into 60 characters.
Exclude phrases. An optional list of texts that the article must not contain. Separate the individual texts with commas. Together they fit into 60 characters. Exclusions are also searched for in the web address of the article, so you can also exclude a section whose name appears in the link.
Search by word root. A checkbox that decides how strictly the phrase is compared with the text of the article. On a new phrase it is unchecked. Details in the next section.
How to word the phrase
This is the most important decision in the whole setup. gas goes through the headline, the opening paragraph and the body of the downloaded article and looks for your phrase in them.
What always applies
- The words have to follow one another in the same order. The phrase "Podlesí Tourist Board" only finds these three words in this sequence. The sentence "board for Podlesí" or "Podlesí, tourist board" does not count.
- Letter case does not matter. "podlesí" and "Podlesí" are the same thing for monitoring.
- Common short words are skipped. Prepositions and conjunctions such as "in", "on", "about", "that" are ignored in the comparison. You can write them into the phrase, but it will not make it more precise.
- Only the headline, the opening paragraph and the body of the article are searched. Excluded phrases are the exception, they are also searched for in the web address of the article.
The difference the "Search by word root" field makes
Unchecked (this is how every new phrase starts). The article has to contain the phrase exactly as you wrote it, including accents. That is why the phrase "Hluboká nad Vltavou" does not find the sentence "Ve Hluboké nad Vltavou otevřeli novou stezku", because the word has a different form there. In the same way it does not find an article that wrote the name without accents as "Hluboka nad Vltavou". This option is useful when your phrase is also a common word and you want to be sure that nothing extra gets into the overview.
Checked. gas also recognises other forms of the words, that is inflection, and stops distinguishing accents. The phrase "Hluboká nad Vltavou" then also finds "ve Hluboké nad Vltavou" and "Hluboka nad Vltavou". For Czech names, personal names and anything that gets inflected in text, this is almost always the right choice. The price is that monitoring will occasionally also hit a word with the same root that has nothing to do with you.
If you are not sure, start with the field unchecked. After a few days look at the mentions found, and if there are only a few, create a copy of the phrase with searching by word root switched on and delete the original phrase. How to make a copy is described below.
Practical recommendations
- Write the full name, not one general word. "Podlesí" also finds the weather, a football match and a cottage in Podlesí. "Podlesí Tourist Board" finds you.
- Write the phrase the way a journalist would write it in a sentence, including accents and with the usual spacing.
- Leave out legal suffixes and punctuation such as "s.r.o.", "z. s.", quotation marks and commas. In articles they are written differently every time, and then the phrase does not match.
- Create a separate phrase for each variant of the name. Phrases cannot handle "or" variants. If you follow both the brand and the address of its website or a hashtag, those are two phrases and both count towards the limit.
- Do not use two-letter and three-letter abbreviations on their own. They appear in texts with completely different meanings. Better combine the abbreviation with another word ("PTB board").
- Use excluded phrases sparingly. Exclusion always works by word root, so it also cuts off other forms of the given word. It is easy to exclude more than you intended.
Editing a phrase
A saved phrase cannot be overwritten. A form opened over an existing record always creates a new monitoring. Editing is therefore done as a copy with new settings, followed by deleting the original.
- In the Phrase list, click the Create copy icon (two sheets of paper) on the right of the row. You will find the same button in the top right of the phrase detail as well.
- The Monitoring copy window opens. The name is pre-filled with the suffix "(copy)", and along with it the search phrase, the excluded phrases, the campaign and the search-by-word-root setting are carried over.
- The measurement dates are not carried over, fill in the Measure from date and Measure until date fields again.
- Change what you need and confirm with the Create monitoring button.
- Check that the new phrase in the list is correct and finds what it should. Only then delete the original.
A copy counts towards the phrase limit just like any other phrase. If your limit is used up, saving the copy ends with an error and you first have to delete the phrase you are replacing. So note down in advance what was set in it, because after deletion you will not be able to look at it any more.
Deleting a phrase
- In the Phrase list, click the red bin icon (Delete monitoring) on the right of the row.
- The Delete monitoring question appears with the name of the phrase and a warning that the action cannot be undone.
- Confirm with the Delete button, or go back with the Cancel button.
When a phrase is deleted, all mentions found under it and the e-mail subscriptions set up for it disappear as well. The e-mail addresses themselves stay stored in gas and their subscriptions to other phrases keep running.
The mentions are not lost forever, though. If you create the same phrase again with the same period, monitoring searches the article archive again and finds the mentions. What does not come back are manually hidden mentions and the e-mail subscriptions you had set up.
What happens next
The phrase is evaluated automatically, roughly several times an hour. The first calculation of a new phrase runs shortly after saving, so you will typically notice the results within a few minutes.
Searching back in time works. Monitoring does not go through the internet in real time, it searches the archive of articles that gas has already downloaded from the media it follows. If you set Measure from date to a date in the past, it also finds older mentions, provided it has those articles in the archive. But it cannot conjure up a past that does not exist: articles from media that gas does not follow, or from a time when it did not yet follow that medium, cannot be found. On top of that, articles older than three years are not added to the archive.
Where you will see the results:
- The Phrase list shows a summary for the whole measurement period of each phrase in the Mentions, Article mentions and Publisher mentions columns.
- The phrase detail, which you open by clicking its name, shows the settings, the time of the last recalculation, the e-mail subscriptions and a table of all mentions found with a link to the original article.
- Media monitoring → Overview summarises mentions across all phrases.
- In the phrase detail you can set up an e-mail subscription. New mentions are then sent to the addresses you enter, but each address first has to confirm the subscription in the e-mail it receives.
After the date in the Measure until date field, the phrase stops being recalculated. The mentions found remain, only no new ones are added, and the phrase stops counting towards the limit.
Common problems
A newly created phrase is not visible in the list
The phrase list follows the period selected in the page header and only shows phrases whose measurement period overlaps the selected period. If you created the phrase for a date range in the past or in the future, switch the period in the header so that it includes that range, otherwise you will not see the row.
The phrase finds nothing
Go through the possible causes in this order.
- The recalculation has not run yet. In the phrase detail check the Last recalculation value. If it says "Never", wait a few minutes and refresh the page.
- The measurement period does not fit. Mentions are searched for by the publication date of the article. Check the Measure from date and Measure until date fields.
- The phrase is written differently from the way the media write it. With the Search by word root field unchecked, the text in the article has to be exactly the same. Try a copy of the phrase with the field checked.
- The phrase is too long or contains punctuation. Shorten it to the core of the name, without commas, quotation marks and suffixes such as "s.r.o.".
- Excluded phrases cut off more than they should have. Exclusion works by word root. Try a copy of the phrase without exclusions and compare the result.
- The medium is not among those followed. You will find the list of media in Media monitoring → Media overview. You can suggest a missing source there with the Request to add a source button.
The phrase finds nonsense or a different company
The phrase is probably too general, or someone else uses the same name. Make it more specific with another word (the name of the town, the field of business, the full name of the organisation), or add a word that regularly appears in the unwanted articles to Exclude phrases. If you have searching by word root switched on, try a copy with it switched off. You can also hide individual unwanted mentions in the phrase detail.
I want to get rid of one particular mention that was found
In the phrase detail, every row of the mentions table has an eye icon on the right labelled hide. A hidden mention stops counting towards the Article mentions and Publisher mentions figures, but it stays in the total Mentions count. You can show it again with the same icon.
The same article appears in the list several times
When one medium publishes the same headline at several addresses, gas marks the further occurrences as a copy. Copies count towards the Mentions figure, but not towards Article mentions or Publisher mentions. If another medium picked up the same story, it is a separate article from a different publisher and it counts in full, because it is a different mention.
Two similar phrases report the same articles
Each phrase is evaluated separately and one article can match several phrases at the same time. That is why the numbers are not added into a single total, each phrase keeps its own. On top of that, two almost identical phrases needlessly take up two places in the limit. If you need both (for example the brand and the website address), leave them as they are and read them as two views. Otherwise delete one of them.
The Create monitoring button is greyed out
Your phrase limit is used up. In that case a coloured alert with the number of phrases used appears above the table. The administrator of the customer account will find a link to the subscription settings in it, other team members will find the names of the administrators they should contact. There are two solutions: delete a phrase you no longer need, or have your plan increased.
Saving ends with a red message about a server error
Most often because the phrase limit is used up. The Create copy button is not disabled when the limit is used up, so the error only appears when saving. The other possibility is text that is too long: the name fits into 40 characters, the search phrase into 60 characters and all excluded phrases together also into 60 characters. Shorten the texts, or free up space by deleting a phrase you do not use, and try again with the Try again button.
The phrase has stopped being recalculated
Check the End date field in the phrase detail. After this date the phrase is no longer recalculated, which is normal. The other possibility is that the phrase limit has been reduced (for example after a change of subscription) and gas therefore only counts the oldest phrases within the limit and skips the newer ones. In that case the administrators of the customer account receive an alert both in the application and by e-mail. The solution is to delete the phrases you no longer need, or to have your plan increased.
The Create monitoring button is missing and the icons in the rows are greyed out
You have the Viewer role in the customer account, and that role may only view data. Ask the administrator of the customer account, whom you will find in Settings → Customer account, to change your role.
After adding a subscription, an e-mail arrived with lots of old mentions
The first e-mail to a newly added address contains all the mentions the phrase has found so far, not only those from the moment of subscribing. For a phrase with a long measurement period that can be a lot of items. Further e-mails contain only new mentions.
I do not know what each phrase is searching for
In the Phrase list, next to the name you also have the Phrase, Excluded phrases and By root columns, where the whole setup is visible in one place. The By root column shows whether searching by word root is switched on for the phrase, and you will not find it anywhere else in the application. The Last recalculation column is hidden in the default view, you can switch it on with the Columns button above the table on the right.