Reviews Monitoring

Reviews monitoring, also known as mention monitoring, is undoubtedly a popular tool. There are two types of reviews monitoring:

Automatic monitoring

This monitoring is carried out automatically by special scripts (programs, bots). The idea is that the script is programmed to periodically check the sites in its database for the mention of a given name, brand, or company. When the script detects that the condition has been met, it reports it.

The advantages of this method are low labor costs, high speed of notification, and coverage of a large number of sites.

However, there are also significant drawbacks to this method! These scripts only understand direct mention of the company, meaning that the condition of mentioning the name must be met. If someone writes “this company is bad,” no notification will come, as the script will not understand which company, even if it is written under a review of the company itself. This is how 80% of reviews are written.

Another major drawback is that the scripts strictly work on the database of sites they have. This is a huge number of the most popular sites, but this database only covers up to 10% of all existing sites. If there are publications on sites that are not included in the database, there is a huge risk of missing mentions of the company or brand. As a result, there will be a huge accumulation of negative reviews. Also, automatic monitoring systems poorly or not at all work with the sentiment of mentions. In the end, it is necessary to resort to manual ranking to sort reviews by type (positive, neutral, negative, question). This manipulation is necessary for a qualitative assessment of the state of reputation and further for building an effective PR campaign.

Manual monitoring

This type of monitoring is carried out without the use of any scripts. Each mention of the company undergoes manual moderation. To find reviews that may affect the company’s reputation, a person has to search the search engines. Several key queries are used to collect sites where the company is mentioned in any way. Then, these sites are periodically checked for new reviews. Monitoring for the appearance of new sites in the search engine’s top results is mandatory.

The advantages of this method include processing even those reviews that do not contain the company’s name. Additionally, this method covers all sites that appear in the search engine’s desired search depth. These are actually the most important indicators.

The disadvantages include huge labor costs to implement the process, which in turn increases the cost of this method. The data comes with some delay, which depends on the monitoring conditions. Another disadvantage is that if the platform is not in the top 30 search results, it is unlikely to be considered. However, in fact, the influence of such a platform on reputation is insignificant because no one will see it. An exception is popular resources that did not make it to the top.

Conclusion

For maximum effectiveness, we combine manual and automatic monitoring. The advantages of one option outweigh the disadvantages of the other, and together they produce very good results. In addition, during our time working in this field, we have gathered a database of sites that may not make it into the search engine’s top results but can have a significant impact on a company’s reputation. We check these sites for reviews about the company, even if they were not found in the search engine.