Topics in Muck Rack
What are Topics?
Topics refer to specific subjects identified within the content of an article. Topics represent the overarching themes or issues being discussed and do not need to include the actual topic word written out.
Topics often have subcategories, with increasing levels of specificity. For example, ‘Health’ might be a topic, and underneath, you’d have a subtopic of ‘Medical Profession.’ Underneath ‘Medical Profession,’ you’d have ‘Medical Specialization.’ And finally, under Medical Specialization, you might have ‘Dentistry’ and ‘Eye Care.’
Topics Directory Page
To access a full list of topics available in Muck Rack, navigate to Monitoring > Topics to view our Topics Directory page.
Via the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC), Muck Rack has 1100+ topics available for discovering and filtering coverage.
Find Articles by Topic
Muck Rack will automatically analyze the text of an article, determine what it is about, and assign up to 4 topics to that article. From the results page, you can easily see the topics associated with an article, and use those topics as a filter within your search.
This simplifies Boolean searches, helping you find what you need and exclude irrelevant results without adding extra operators or keywords.
Learn more by watching this video or following the tutorial below:
Enter your query in the Articles tab and select Search. (We recommend refraining from adding any Topics filters until you see what Topics appear in the results)
View any assigned Topics below articles in the results.
If you see Topics appear that you would like to exclude, select them from the "None of these" filter under Topics on the left-hand side.
NOTE: When leveraging the Topics filters in Article Search, we recommend you start by adding the topics you'd like to exclude to the "None of these" section. This will help you avoid "missing mentions" if a relevant piece of coverage does not have the Topic assigned that you are looking for.
Find People by Topic
By leveraging the power of Artificial Intelligence, Muck Rack will automatically analyze text within articles written by a journalist, determine what they are about, and then assign topics to a journalist based on what they write about the most.
Most Covered Topics will appear on journalist profiles, both from the profile page and the search results page. This will display which topics a journalist has covered in the last 12 months in order of frequency, providing a quick way to tell which topics a journalist covers.
NOTE: There is a minimum threshold for articles written in the last year per journalist (>20 English articles) for this calculation to run. These topics are updated once per day, in the morning.
You can also apply the Most Covered Topics filter to any People Search and see the journalists who have written about that topic within the past 12 months. Topics can be selected from the profile to see all the articles they've written on that topic.
Discover Top Authors for a Specific Topic
You can use the Article Topics filter to surface the journalists writing about a particular topic most frequently. This can be a valuable way to discover media contacts who are most likely to write about a relevant topic that's important to you. Here's our recommended workflow:
Perform an Article Search with an Article Topics filter applied.
Save your search.
Use this Saved Search as the data source in a Dashboard widget such as Most Frequent Authors (this widget is included in the Relationship Summary dashboard template):
Or use it as a data source for a Trend Report, then review the Top Authors widget:
TIP:
To continually surface new journalists writing about a topic not already on your media list, create a media list for the topic, add your top authors, then edit your Saved Search and apply the media list as an exclusion filter before saving.
Topics in Coverage Reports
Within Coverage Reports, you’ll notice two Topics widgets on the Overview tab of your report: Top Topics and Topics Breakdown. These provide you with a quick view of which topics are most prominently associated with your coverage.
You’ll also find Topics as an available column and filter within the Articles tab of your Coverage Reports. Here, you can leverage sorting and filters to quickly surface the most relevant coverage based on a given topic.
This feature is exclusive to our Premier subscription; please contact your Customer Success Manager if you would like to upgrade your subscription.
Topics in Dashboards
A handful of new, Topics-focused widgets can now be found within the Widget Library and added to any custom Dashboard on a Premier plan.
Topics Dashboard Widgets
Widget | Description |
Top Topics | This widget surfaces the top 10 topics for a set of coverage and the number of articles for each, sorted by the topics with the most coverage.
NOTE: When using a single data source, topic links can be selected to view the article data. However, if multiple data sources are used for this widget, then topics will not link out.
Recommended Use: |
Topics Breakdown
 | This widget is a pie chart that defaults to showing the breakdown of all topics for the coverage based on the number of articles where that topic is mentioned.
The chart defaults to the most general topics. Clicking into each general topic (e.g. one pie slice represents Health) will automatically reload the pie chart and show the breakdown of subtopics within that topic (e.g. one pie slice for Healthcare and one for Medical Profession).
You can select wedges to see articles attached to that specific topic or subtopic.
Recommended Use: |
Topics Treemap
 | This widget provides a visualization of the most prevalent topics that make up a user’s coverage.
The treemap shows the most prevalent topics by relative size, and allows users to rollover the topics to see the total article count. Rolling over topics also showcases how many ‘levels’ deep for a given subtopic. Color is used to group topics that are related to one another.
Recommended Use: |
Topics Over Time | This widget surfaces the top 5 topics for a set of coverage and provides a graph that shows how each one increases or decreases over a given time period.
NOTE: The widget defaults to the top 5 topics, but allows users to edit the widget to specifically analyze the topics most relevant to them.
Recommended Use: |
Trends in Topics
 | This widget shows the top 10 topics in a table view and the number of articles for each topic as well as how the volume compares to a previous time period.
Selecting the Comparison column will allow you to sort your topics by those trending the most, whether up or down.
Recommended Use: |
Learn More About Dashboards
To learn more about how to create, edit, and leverage Dashboards in Muck Rack, we encourage you to explore our Help Center or the Dashboards course in Muck Rack Academy.
This feature is exclusive to our Premier subscription; please contact your Customer Success Manager if you would like to upgrade your subscription.
Widget Limitations
⚠️ Please note the following limitations of Topics widgets:
Like all widgets today, if a Topics widget has multiple Searches or Coverage Reports powering it, click-through is not available. This is because we do not yet have an experience that combines multiple data sources.
Just like widget functionality today, clicking into any Topic Widgets will bring you to the underlying article data in either Search or Coverage Reports.
(E.g. if I click a slice that says ‘Health,’ I’ll be brought to a screen that shows all the articles with the ‘Health’ topic.)
When editing widgets that allow you to select specific Topics to measure, you will only be able to select up to 30 Topics (as opposed to all possible Topics in the coverage).
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Question | Answer |
Can we see a list of all possible Topics and their Subtopics? | Yes; you can find a full list of available topics and subtopics on our Topics Directory page. |
What if I don't know the exact name of the Topic I'm looking for? | You do not need an exact or partial match to locate a topic within any Article Topics filters. Start typing a word for what you're looking for, and Muck Rack will show the most relevant topic suggestions:  |
Why doesn't this article have any Topics assigned? | There are a few reasons this can happen:
|
I tried to use the Topics filter to find coverage for a topic, but I'm not seeing all of my mentions. What should I do? | Try removing any filters under the "All of these" or "Any of these" sections and only include the Topics you'd like to exclude under the "None of these" sections. |
I'm using "None of these" in the Article Topics filters, but it's excluding too many articles. I only want to exclude a very specific topic. What should I do? | To ensure you are targeting a more specific subset of articles, we recommend confirming whether the Topic you're choosing is a Parent topic or a subtopic. Ideally, you want to choose the most specific subtopic possible.
One way to do this is to perform a search using the keywords you're looking to exclude and reviewing the results to confirm which Topics seem to be assigned the most. You can then hover over any Topic to see where it falls within the Topics Tree:
In the example shown above, "Personal finance and investment" would be a better choice than "Economy, business and finance" as it will target more specific coverage. |
Can Topics by added by request? | Not at this time. |
Does a search for a parent topic automatically search for all of the subtopics (a.k.a. child topics)?
| Yes; if you search for “Sports,” then “baseball” and “football” will come back, too.
|
Is there a limit to the number of Topics? | While only up to 4 topics will show with the article in the results, there is no set limit to the number of topics you can include or exclude using filters. |
How will UK spelling (versus US spelling) play into topics?
| While Topics is based on the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) which uses US spellings, the model will correctly classify topics regardless of spelling (so both "theatre" and "theater" will still correctly classify as "movies/cinema") |
Will every journalist profile have topics? | There is a minimum threshold for articles written in the last year per journalist (>20 English articles) for this calculation to run. A topic must also be seen in more than 5% of the journalist's aggregated articles to be included.
These topics are updated once per day, in the morning. |
Where can I find more details about Artificial Intelligence (AI) features? | Please see An Overview of AI in Muck Rack. |
Where can I find more details about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data privacy? | If you have questions about data privacy, see our Muck Rack AI Trust and Safety FAQs and AI Terms and Conditions |
Get Help
For additional help, contact support by choosing the chat icon in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen and selecting Messages > Send us a message.
💬 Was this article helpful?
Share your feedback and let us know how to improve our Help Center content.