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 this week

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 Create on either 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.

Twitter

Twitter 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 Tweets. Meltwater has access to the full Twitter firehose, allowing users 15 months of historic Twitter 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.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network on the internet, where users can find the right job or internship, connect and strengthen professional relationships, and learn the skills needed to succeed in their careers. Gather insights into professional conversations on LinkedIn, the leading platform for B2B conversations.

Accessing results for LinkedIn can be done after authenticating a LinkedIn account and then identifying and adding the specific keywords you wish to collect in Meltwater.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, Twitter, 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.

Pinterest - Learn More

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.

Twitch - Learn More

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.

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.


There are several other add-on source types that can be included with your Explore subscription. These sources are in addition to what is included above and will need to be added to your account. Please reach out to your account manager for more information.

Broadcast - Learn More

These searches pull in radio and television clips hosted by TVEyes. 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 - Learn More

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.

Sina Weibo - Learn More

Sina Weibo is a Chinese microblogging platform. Launched in 2009, it is one of China's biggest social media platforms, with over 550 million monthly active users as of 2021. Sina Weibo is very similar to Twitter.

Our monitoring of Sina Weibo is of all public content. We collect the data via their API (keywords-based data collection). Your monitoring keywords will be matched with text in the body of the post, repost, or comment.

WeChat - Learn More

WeChat is a Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. It was first released in 2011 and became one of the world's largest standalone mobile apps in 2021, with over 1.2 billion monthly active users. WeChat has been described as China's "app for everything" because of its wide range of functions.

Our monitoring of Wechat is of more than 800,000 WeChat official accounts, of which around 90 to 95% of accounts are highly active (posting at least once a week, or handling customer care). We collect WeChat data via their API (keywords-based data collection). Your monitoring keywords will be matched with text in the body of the post.

Douyin - Learn More

Douyin is a Chinese social media video app for creating and sharing short lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos.

It was launched in September 2016 by China’s young tech giant ByteDance.

As of 2021, there are about 600 Million monthly active users on Douyin.

We collect WeChat data via the Douyin API (keywords-based data collection). Douyin data can only be gathered using specific keywords.

Little Red Book (Xiaohongshu) - Learn More

Created in 2014, Xiaohongshu, also known as Little Red Book or simply Red, has grown to become China’s foremost fashion and luxury shopping platform. But it isn’t really a shopping platform at all. It’s a content-sharing site where users can post product photos with reviews and tips for others to read, comment, and save to their boards - like Pinterest.

Youku - Learn More

Launched in December 2003, Youku is a video hosting service based in Beijing, China. It operates as a subsidiary of Alibaba Group Holding Limited. Youku is one of China's top online video and streaming service platforms. As of 2020, there are about 400 Million monthly active users.

Bilibili - Learn More

Launched in early 2010, Bilibili is a Chinese video-sharing website based in Shanghai. It is focused on animation, comics, and games (ACG), where users can submit, view, and add overlaid commentary on videos. By late 2021, the average monthly active users had reached about 267 million.


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