Media Mention Monitor — Meltwater Alternative

Monitor public news coverage through Google News RSS and selected feeds. Export deduplicated brand, competitor, or topic mentions with article links, matched queries, source details, and collection times. For communications analysts, each dataset record is one retained public media mention with query and source context.

Workflow: put the results to work

Set the brands or topics to watch and add trusted public feeds where relevant. Review the source and publication context of each retained article, then use the coverage set in a report or editorial queue. This workflow covers public news and selected feeds rather than licensed broadcast archives.

Best fit

Use this Actor when a founder, analyst, or communications team needs a repeatable, API-friendly press-coverage snapshot for a specified watchlist. It is especially useful when the next step is a spreadsheet, alert, report, or internal review that needs article URLs, publishers, dates, source provenance, and the queries that produced each item.

Choose Meltwater or another full media-intelligence suite when you need global licensed coverage, social and broadcast monitoring, sentiment analysis, journalist outreach, collaborative dashboards, historical workspace reporting, or managed enterprise onboarding.

What you get

Each dataset row represents one public article mention with source-linked collection details.

Field	Meaning
title, url, snippet, publishedAt	Feed-supplied coverage details
matchedQueries	Configured Google News searches that yielded the article
publisherName, publisherUrl	Publisher metadata when the feed supplies it
sourceName, sourceTags, feedUrl, sourceUrl, feedType	Source and collection provenance
collectedAt	Timestamp for this collection run

Source-supplied publisher and publication-date fields remain null when unavailable, preserving an honest view of available metadata.

Input

{
  "watchQueries": ["OpenAI", "Anthropic"],
  "trustedSources": [
    {"url": "https://hnrss.org/frontpage", "name": "Hacker News", "tags": ["technology"]}
  ],
  "language": "en-US",
  "country": "US",
  "lookbackDays": 7,
  "maxItems": 100,
  "excludeKeywords": ["sponsored"]
}

maxItems is a whole-run cap. It bounds the persisted rows and therefore the main event charge. Watch queries feed Google News RSS; trusted sources broaden the collection only with public feeds you choose.

Outcome contract

Every terminal path writes both OUTPUT and RUN_SUMMARY.

COMPLETE        all readable sources completed and retained mentions were written
PARTIAL         useful mentions were written with one or more source or write warnings
VALID_EMPTY     readable sources produced zero mentions for the configured window and exclusions
INVALID_INPUT   update the watchlist, source URLs, or numeric bounds
UPSTREAM_FAILED requested sources yielded zero usable public syndication feeds

Example output

{
  "id": "https://example.com/news/story",
  "title": "Example coverage headline",
  "url": "https://example.com/news/story",
  "matchedQueries": ["OpenAI"],
  "publisherName": "Example News",
  "publisherUrl": "https://example.com",
  "sourceName": "Google News RSS",
  "sourceTags": ["google-news"],
  "snippet": "Feed-provided article summary.",
  "publishedAt": "2026-08-31T12:00:00.000Z",
  "feedUrl": "https://news.google.com/rss/search?...",
  "sourceUrl": "https://news.google.com/rss/search?...",
  "feedType": "rss",
  "collectedAt": "2026-08-31T12:05:00.000Z"
}

API

Use the Actor endpoint with your own Apify token:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/khadinakbar~meltwater-alternative/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"watchQueries":["OpenAI"],"lookbackDays":7,"maxItems":25}'

Prompt card

As an AI agent, collect a seven-day public-news coverage snapshot for these brands. Return up to 50 deduplicated mentions with headline, article URL, publisher, publication date, watch query, source provenance, and collection time. Report the terminal outcome and dataset readback path, keep the stated cost cap, and treat the returned sources as the scope of the result.

Workflow scenario: from watchlist to editorial review

A communications lead starts with two brand names and a seven-day window, then adds a trusted trade feed for context. The Actor combines the public-news and trusted-feed results, merges duplicate article URLs, and keeps every watch query that matched the same story. Next, the lead reviews publisher and collection provenance, exports the dataset to an internal brief, and schedules the same bounded input for the next editorial review.

How this workflow compares with Meltwater

Decision point	This Actor	Meltwater
Bounded job	Current public-news and selected-feed mention collection	Broader media-intelligence environment
Input	Up to ten explicit watch queries plus public feeds	Suite-level monitoring configuration
Output	Source-linked JSON records with query and collection provenance	Broader monitoring, reporting, and workflow outputs
Billing and same-job cost	Pay per event plus platform usage; see the Pricing tab for current rates.	Enterprise custom-quote pricing; equal-workload allocation is not recorded
Effective efficiency	Usable-row and elapsed-time evidence will be measured on the final build	No authorized equal-workload timing measurement is recorded
API and automation	Rerunnable structured input through Apify API, schedules, and dataset readback	Suite reporting, alert, and integration workflows
Better fit	A small, inspectable collection run that feeds another system	Enterprise teams needing broad multi-channel coverage and operations

Meltwater documents global media monitoring, social listening, sentiment analysis, broadcast and podcast tracking, influencer tools, reporting, and integrations. Those remain outside this Actor’s contract. Meltwater is a trademark of its owner; this independent Actor is not affiliated with, associated with, or endorsed by Meltwater.

Focused standalone workflow and next step

Use it for explicit public-news watchlists. For a one-off keyword search without trusted-feed aggregation or a multi-query monitoring contract, continue with the Google News Scraper and then pass its results into your review or reporting workflow.

Builder's note

I built this around a transparent monitoring boundary: public syndication data is useful when each retained row clearly names its watch query, article URL, collection source, and collection time. My goal was to make the export step inspectable and composable, while keeping broad media-intelligence needs easy to route to a suite designed for them.

Responsible use

Collect only public sources you are authorized to monitor and respect publisher terms, copyright rules, and robots directives. Feed text remains limited to what a public feed supplies; the Actor does not bypass paywalls or scrape private accounts.

Pricing and run costs

This Actor uses Pay per event plus Apify platform usage. The Pricing tab lists the current event rates and billing terms.

Event	Billing unit	When it applies
apify-actor-start	Actor Start	Charged when the Actor starts running. Number of events charged depends on Actor memory (one event per GB, minimum one event).
media-mention-collected	Media mention collected	Charged only when one normalized, deduplicated public-news or trusted-feed mention is persisted in the dataset.

Run cost combines the charged events and Apify platform usage. Review the run charge limit and requested result count before starting.

Connect an AI agent

Use the Apify MCP configurator to choose an available client connection. Inspect this Actor’s current input schema and required credentials before running it.