Keywords & Queries

Keywords are the foundation of every scan. Well-chosen keywords mean more relevant mentions and higher-quality leads. Poorly chosen keywords mean noise and wasted credits.

Types of keywords

• Brand keywords: The client's company name, product names, and common abbreviations. Example: "MentionFox", "Mention Fox".
• People keywords: Names of the client's CEO, founders, or public-facing executives. Mentions of key people often signal company news or sentiment.
• Competitor keywords: Competitor brand names. These surface comparison discussions and switching opportunities.
• Intent keywords: Phrases that signal buying intent, like "looking for", "recommend", "alternative to", "switching from". Combine these with category terms for powerful lead-generation queries.
• Negative keywords: Terms to exclude. Use -keyword syntax to filter out irrelevant results (e.g., -jobs to exclude job postings).

AI-generated suggestions

MentionFox's Smart Suggestions feature analyzes a client's profile and generates optimized search queries. Smart Suggestions uses the competitors in your Company Profile to generate intent-based scan ideas — the more competitors you add, the sharper the switching-from suggestions. Access this from the client's page, Scans tab.

Best practices

Start with 3-5 core keywords and expand based on results. Use exact-match quotes for multi-word brand names to avoid false positives. Combine brand keywords with platform-specific terms when scanning niche sources. Review your scan results after each run and adjust keywords to reduce noise and increase relevance.