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Monitoring: How to Write Monitoring Query
Monitoring: How to Write Monitoring Query

Learn how to write and properly define query of keywords and phrases with this quick guide.

Tereza avatar
Written by Tereza
Updated over a week ago

Creating a monitoring query is the alpha and omega of our Social Media & Web Monitoring Tool and its monitoring feature.

Based on your query our system searches the internet and its external sources to return the most relevant mentions to your app. 

To create a query, open the app settings and go into the Data Sources tab.

Basic Query Rules

Diacritics

All letters with diacritics are transformed into letters without diacritics, so it does not matter what you use.

hlavní město Praha = hlavni mesto Praha


Letter Case

Our search is case insensitive, which means interpreting upper- and lowercase letters as being the same.

Prague = prague


📌 Important:

  • Don’t use commas and blank lines (enter).

  • Save history when I change the query. = If you want to keep past results when updating your keywords, make sure you check this box! Otherwise, once you update your keywords, the history will not be saved.

Query Operators

A query can include multiple keywords and phrases, which can be linked into a monitoring string using predefined operators:

AND
A space in our system indicates this operator. Mention is valid when all of its arguments (keywords/phrases) match (are included in the mention). 

Example: 

lettuce bacon tomato  


OR
A pipe indicates the operator OR. Mention is valid when any of the arguments (keywords/phrases) match (are included in the mention).  

Example:

lettuce | bacon | tomato  


NOT
Operator NOT is indicated by an exclamation mark. Mention is valid when the first argument matches and the second does not. This operator is used when you wish to exclude keywords which can be related to the keyword you are looking for.

Example:

shaken !stirred


NEAR
Operator NEAR is used when you want to look for two keywords that occur in a given interval of words in a paragraph. Mention is valid when its two arguments not only match but also occur within a given limited distance from each other. 


The operator is defined by NEAR slash interval in which the two keywords should occur in.

Example (in this case we look for keyword "monica" which is in a maximum distance of 5 words from keyword "chandler"):

monica NEAR/5 chandler 

NEAR operator can also be used in combination with operator AND / OR.

Example (in this case we look for a combination of red hat/coat black hat/coat in a given limit of 5 words) :

(red | black) NEAR/5 (hat | coat)


PROXIMITY
Keyword proximity can be used in cases you want to look for two keywords that occur in a given distance. The difference between NEAR and PROXIMITY is that PROXIMITY operator takes only keywords as arguments and does not work with keywords combinations using other operators (AND/OR).

Proximity is indicated by ~ and given words limit.

Example:

"monica chandler"~10

PHRASES
With Zoomsphere you can search for keywords as well as for phrases. To search for a phrase, you can put your phrase into quotation marks. Our system will then consider this phrase as one argument of your search.

Example:

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” 

ASTERIX
Asterix replaces all characters which follow after the keyword. If you want to search for all possible forms of a specific keyword, use the base of the keyword with Asterix at the end.

Example (this search will return all possible forms of word help – helpless, helpful, helped, helps):

help*

GROUPING OF OPERATORS
Operators can be grouped and combined using brackets. There is a maximum of 3 levels of nesting.

Example (in this case we search for a combination of colour – operator OR – at least one of them needs to be included in the mention and keyword shirt)

(red | green | blue) shirt

When your query is ready, you can select the language of the search and test its validity by hitting Test query to see the preview of your mentions:

When you are happy with your query and the results you received, just save it and see the mentions in the dashboard.


If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact us via our in-app chat or email support@zoomsphere.com. 🙂

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