# Brand & Keyword Mention Aggregator (`gabrielaxy/brand-mention-aggregator`) Actor

Find every Hacker News and Reddit mention of your brand, product, or keyword from the last N days. Exact-phrase matching (no false positives). No API key required.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/gabrielaxy/brand-mention-aggregator.md
- **Developed by:** [Gabriel Antony Xaviour](https://apify.com/gabrielaxy) (community)
- **Categories:** Developer tools
- **Stats:** 3 total users, 0 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

Pay per usage

This Actor is paid per platform usage. The Actor is free to use, and you only pay for the Apify platform usage, which gets cheaper the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#pay-per-usage

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Brand & Keyword Mention Aggregator

**Find every Hacker News mention of your brand, product, or keyword in the last N days. No API key required. Free.**

Exact-phrase matching — no false positives from substring matches.

> **⚠️ Reddit is currently HN-only on Apify cloud.** Reddit blocks Apify's datacenter IPs. To include Reddit results, run this actor with residential proxies enabled in the run settings (adds ~$0.0004 per run). HN works without proxies.

### What it does

For each keyword you provide:

1. Queries Hacker News (via Algolia's official search API) for **exact-phrase** matches in the last N days
2. Queries Reddit's public search.json for the same exact phrase (requires residential proxies on Apify cloud)
3. Dedupes by permalink
4. Returns a flat dataset of mentions with author, score, snippet, and link

### Use cases

- **Founders** monitoring brand mentions (you launched on HN — who's talking about you?)
- **PR / marketing teams** tracking competitor or category mentions
- **Devs** monitoring their open-source project's name across communities
- **Hiring** spotting people mentioning your stack ("we just shipped X in next.js")
- **Customer research** surfacing real user feedback for a product

### Input

```json
{
  "keywords": ["next.js", "supabase"],
  "days": 7,
  "maxPerKeyword": 30
}
```

| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| `keywords` | string\[] | One or more exact phrases to track |
| `days` | integer | Look back this many days (default 7, max 90) |
| `maxPerKeyword` | integer | Cap per keyword per source (default 30, max 100) |

### Output (example, query="next.js")

```json
{
  "source": "hackernews",
  "keyword": "next.js",
  "title": "Arrow Flight vs. JSON in Next.js: Benchmarking Python and Go",
  "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48077301",
  "permalink": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48077301",
  "snippet": "...",
  "author": "keynha",
  "ts": 1778414403393,
  "score": 12,
  "numComments": 4
}
```

### Performance

- **2 keywords × 7 days**: 5.5s, $0.0012, ~26 unique mentions

### Pricing

**Free.** You pay only Apify's compute (~$0.001 per run).

### FAQ

**Why exact-phrase matching?**
Without it, searching "cosmiclan" matches user "cosmicgadget" (substring). We wrap your keyword in quotes before passing it to the underlying search APIs. Zero false positives.

**Why does Reddit return 0 results on Apify cloud?**
Reddit's anti-bot detection blocks Apify's datacenter IPs. Two options:

1. Enable residential proxies in the run settings (adds ~$0.0004 per run)
2. Run this actor locally where Reddit doesn't block you (the source is on GitHub)

**Can I add Twitter / X / LinkedIn?**
Those platforms aggressively block scraping and require paid API access. Open a feature request and we'll plug in the appropriate paid actor.

**How often should I run this?**
Daily for active monitoring. Apify's free tier covers ~3,000 daily runs/month.

### Author

Built by [gabrielaxy](https://apify.com/gabrielaxy).

# Actor input Schema

## `keywords` (type: `array`):

Brand names, product names, or phrases to track. Each will be matched as an EXACT phrase across HN and Reddit.

## `days` (type: `integer`):

Look back this many days from now.

## `maxPerKeyword` (type: `integer`):

Cap items per keyword per source (HN or Reddit). Total max ≈ keywords × 2 × maxPerKeyword.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "keywords": [
    "next.js"
  ],
  "days": 7,
  "maxPerKeyword": 30
}
```

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "keywords": [
        "next.js"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("gabrielaxy/brand-mention-aggregator").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "keywords": ["next.js"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("gabrielaxy/brand-mention-aggregator").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print("💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/" + run["defaultDatasetId"])
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "keywords": [
    "next.js"
  ]
}' |
apify call gabrielaxy/brand-mention-aggregator --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "mcp-remote",
                "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=gabrielaxy/brand-mention-aggregator",
                "--header",
                "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_API_TOKEN>"
            ]
        }
    }
}

```

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/VGNHUMETGgTRc9pzo/builds/Ukwv1cqLwKH7dk9N9/openapi.json