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Data Sources In Explore

See how Explore gets its data, how different sources are crawled, and the limits to using each one

Cheyenne V. avatar
Written by Cheyenne V.
Updated in the last 15 minutes

Explore analyzes billions of results live, and new content is collected 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This article contains information about Meltwater sources and demographics, such as countries and languages.

This article will cover:


Finding the Sources Included in Your Subscription

Sources vary from package to package. To find the sources included in your subscription, follow these steps:

  1. Click Explore in the left-hand navigation bar.

  2. Navigate to the search options section and select Keyword Search or Advanced Search.

  3. Click the Source type drop-down.

All sources included in your subscription will be listed in this drop-down.


The Different Source Types Meltwater Offers

Below is a list of every source type Meltwater offers. If there is a source type listed below that you do not see in your Explore, please contact your account manager to learn more about adding source types at an additional cost.

X (formerly Twitter)

X is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables users to send and read text-based posts of up to 280 characters, known as Posts.

Meltwater has access to the full X firehose, allowing users 15 months of historic X content.

Blogs

A blog is a personal journal published on the web consisting of discrete entries or "posts," typically displayed in reverse chronological order. It is usually themed on a single subject and written by an individual or small group. Unlike a static website, most blogs allow readers to post comments or interact with each other via the blog. Over 1.5 million blogs are posted daily from over 29 million unique social blogs. We define social blogs as all blogs except for editorial blogs. Editorial blogs are blogs associated with news sites such as http://www.mercurynews.com/blogs. Meltwater crawls these blogs the same way we crawl news documents, but we make them available as a separate source type in editorial searches.

In Explore, users see 15 months of historic Blog content.

Forums

A forum, sometimes called a message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. A forum can have many separate discussions going on at a time, and each one is referred to as a thread. Usually, a forum has an underlying theme or topic like politics, sports, technology, fashion, etc. By pulling in around 5.2 million forum posts per day, you will have access to more targeted content regarding your topic of interest.

In Explore, users see 15 months of historic Forum content.

Reddit

Reddit is a social sharing website that offers social news aggregation, web content ratings, and discussions. Registered members submit content such as links, text posts, and images to the site, which is then voted up or down by other members. Approximately 6 million Reddit posts are pulled into Explore daily.

In Explore, users see 15 months of historic Reddit content.

Product Reviews

Product review sites are web pages where users can rate products. They may be dedicated product comparison sites or the review sections of large e-commerce companies like amazon.com.

By monitoring Product Reviews, you can gauge customer satisfaction and gain deeper insights into your products and competitors by tapping into over 865,000 reviews pulled in daily.

In Explore, users see 15 months of historic Review content.

News

News is copyrighted content from news sources such as The New York Times, BBC, CNN, local newspapers, and online journals. Content posted on television networks' websites is also classified as News. Over 3 million traditional media articles are crawled through Meltwater's news sources daily.

In Explore, users see 10 years of News content.

Comments

On many websites (news and blogs, primarily), users can leave comments at the bottom of the page. By monitoring these comments, you will gain a deeper context-specific understanding of your brand by instantly sifting through the approximately 2.2 million comments pulled into our system each day.

In Explore, users see 15 months of historic Comments.

Request for Proposal

A request for proposal, also referred to as RFP or Tender, is a business document that announces a project and solicits a proposal, often through a bidding process, by an agency or company interested in procurement of a good or service to potential suppliers.

Facebook

Users can create profiles with photos, lists of personal interests, contact information, and other personal information. Users can communicate with friends and other users through private or public messages and a chat feature. They can also create and join interest groups and "like pages," some of which are maintained by organizations as a means of advertising. There are personal pages and fan pages. Meltwater only collects from fan pages.

Accessing Facebook results can be done after authenticating a Facebook account and then identifying and adding the specific Facebook pages for which you wish to collect posts and comments in Meltwater.

Users will see 450 days of historic Facebook content once the page is added, which turns into rolling 15 months.

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website created in February 2005. Users can upload, view, and share videos on YouTube. YouTube hosts a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging, short original videos, and educational videos. Explore pulls content directly from YouTube’s API and searches video titles, descriptions, and tags.

In Explore, users see 30 days of historic YouTube data. Both videos and comments will be hidden after 30 days.

Instagram

Instagram is an online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing, and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos and share them either publicly or privately on the app and through various other social networking platforms, such as Facebook, X, Tumblr, and Flickr.

Accessing Instagram results can be done after setting up the hashtag or competitor search using an Instagram business token. Results include posts, videos, reels, comments, and replies.

All Instagram data will be pulled into Explore from the point of connection forward.

Pinterest

Pinterest is an image-sharing and social media service designed to enable the saving and discovery of information on the internet using images and, on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos in the form of pinboards.

Our monitoring of Pinterest is a sample set of all content posted or pinned by 1.5 million Pinterest users (out of the 475 million monthly active users). Your monitoring keywords will be matched with text accompanying images, such as the title and caption of the content. It does not include any text within images or image recognition.

Learn more about Pinterest Monitoring.

Twitch

Twitch is a video live streaming service that focuses on video game live streaming, including broadcasts of esports competitions. It also offers music broadcasts, creative content, and, more recently, "in real life" streams.

Our monitoring of Twitch includes content from a sample of active Twitch users. Clips/posts become searchable once the live stream is over and the clip is saved to a Twitch user's page. Your monitoring keywords will be matched with the title and description of the saved stream.

Learn more about Twitch Monitoring.

KakaoTalk

KakaoTalk is its own source within Explore. It can easily be targeted, filtered, and analyzed directly.

KakaoTalk—2k daily posts—KakaoTalk (or KaTalk) is a South Korean messaging app launched in 2010. With roughly 53 million monthly active users as of 2022, It is similar in functionality to LINE.

LINE Voom

LINE Voom is its own source within Explore. It can easily be targeted, filtered, and analyzed directly.

LINE Voom - 5k posts per day - LINE Voom is similar in function to Instagram and available within the main LINE app. It features posts with text, images, videos, stickers, etc. Previously known as LINE Timeline, LINE Voom was launched in 2021. The main app, LINE, was Launched in 2011 in Japan and is popular in Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand, with over 230 million monthly active users.

Broadcast

These searches pull in radio and television clips. When you open the clip, you can view or listen to the original content, read the transcript, see information about the program, and more!

Podcasts

Our top-ranking podcasts are sourced from the largest U.S.-based directory for podcast listening. Thousands of new episodes are added and transcribed daily for search and discovery.

Currently, you have access to about 25,000 Podcasts, and that number is growing (90% US-based, 10% International). This also includes 16 languages and dialects, including English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian.

Chinese Social Monitoring

Note: If there is a source on the above list that is not currently in your subscription, contact your Meltwater Account Manger to learn more about getting sources added.


💡 Tip

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