In Listen, you can view mentions from a number of available sources. Mentions are provided by the Brandwatch Data Library and originate from popular online sources, such as social media networks, review sites, news sites, blogs, and more. In this article, find out more about the different sources available and what you can expect to see.
In this article:
What sources are available in Listen?
When you create a new Listen search, by default you will begin to see matching mentions from all available sources. However, you can apply a platform filter to your search to select/deselect applicable sources. The available sources are listed below:
- X (Twitter)
- Tumblr
- Forums
- YouTube
- News
- Blogs
- Review sites
Tip:
Premium data sources – such as TV/radio (via TVEyes) – are available as add-ons in our Consumer Research platform. Please contact your Customer Success Manager to learn more.
What mentions can I expect to see from each Listen source?
If mentions match your search query, you will be able to see mentions from each source as described below. For help creating a Listen search, please visit our article on Creating and Saving Searches.
X (Twitter)
Brandwatch is a X (Twitter) Official Partner and we offer the full firehose of X (Twitter) data. Public posts (tweets), including reposts (retweets) and quote posts (quote tweets), will be indexed as mentions.
You can see the following data from public, non-owned Facebook Pages:
- Page posts from ~200,000 non-owned Facebook Pages across the following industries: aviation, alcohol, automotive, crowdfunding, fashion, banking and finance, food/beverage, gaming, grocery, hospitality, insurance, audio/visual, print and online media, pharma/healthcare, real estate, retail, sports, supply chain/logistics, and technology.
Note:
For Saved Searches that were originally created as queries in Brandwatch Consumer Research, the Facebook public data source will first need to be enabled in Consumer Research.
Tracking specific non-owned and owned Facebook Pages requires advance authentication in Listen. Before Facebook mentions from these sources can be indexed for your Listen searches, you will need to add the Pages as targeted data sources and manually select the pages you would like to search through.
Once you have successfully added the pages you would like to track, the following data will be indexed from your owned Facebook Pages:
- Page posts
- Comments on Page posts
Warning:
Please be aware that while possible in some cases, Listen does not reliably support the indexing of ads/dark posts and ad/dark post comments at this time.
The following data will be indexed from manually tracked non-owned Facebook Pages:
- Page posts
- Comments on Page posts
Note:
Audience comment mentions will link to the Facebook post that the comment belongs to, rather than the comment itself. When a comment is edited on Facebook, the edited version will be collected as a new mention.
You can see the following from public, non-owned Instagram accounts:
- Posts from 720,000 non-owned Instagram accounts from across the following industries: aviation, alcohol, automotive, crowdfunding, fashion, banking and finance, food/beverage, gaming, grocery, hospitality, insurance, audio/visual, print and online media, pharma/healthcare, real estate, retail, sports, supply chain/logistics, and technology.
Note:
For Saved Searches that were originally created as queries in Brandwatch Consumer Research, the Instagram public data source will first need to be enabled in Consumer Research.
- You will have access to posts from public Instagram accounts but not comments on these posts. To collect post comments and other metadata, you will need to track the Instagram account as a targeted data source.
- Public Instagram data will date back to February 2025 for any new query. Existing queries will need to be re-saved when adding public Instagram data as a data source.
Like Facebook, the same advance authentication is required from you before Listen can index specific owned and non-owned mentions from Instagram. Mentions can be indexed from either your own Instagram Business accounts, from non-owned Instagram Business and Creator accounts, or from public posts that use your tracked hashtags. See our article on targeted data sources to find out more.
The following data will be indexed from owned Instagram accounts:
- Posts
- Comments on posts
- Tags of your Instagram accounts
- Mentions of you Instagram account
The following data will be indexed from non-owned Instagram accounts:
- Posts
And finaly, the following data will be indexed from hashtags:
- Public posts that use the hashtag
Like Facebook and Instagram, authentication is required from you before Listen can index mentions from LinkedIn. Once authenticated, you can see mentions from a LinkedIn Company Page your organization owns. Tracking your own LinkedIn Company Page gives you access to the page's posts, sponsored posts, and post comments. See our article on targeted data sources to find out more.
Tumblr
Brandwatch offers the full firehose of Tumblr data. Public Tumblr posts, including text, image, and video posts, will be indexed as mentions.
Forums
We cover thousands of forums with data going back to 2010, including: Stack Overflow, Forocoches, Pistonheads, GameSpot, FlyerTalk, Naver, MacRumors, MoneySaving Expert, The Student Room, Steam Community, and more.
YouTube
We collect YouTube videos and comments via our third-party data providers.
Brandwatch is an Official Reddit Partner and we offer the full firehose of Reddit data. All posts and comments from active subreddits will be indexed as mentions. You may also see mentions from top historical subreddits. More recent posts and comments may include the Reddit Score.
Bluesky
We ingest and store the entire Bluesky firehose of approximately 8 million mentions per day, giving us access to all public Bluesky posts and comments/replies in near real time.
- Mentions: Posts and Comments/Replies
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Metadata:
- Full mention text
- Timestamp
- Sentiment and emotion
- Author name
- Likes count
- Reply count
- Repost count
- Quoted posts count
- Number of people following the author (at the time of posting)
- Number of people the author is following (at the time of posting)
- Total number of times the author has posted (at the time of posting)
News
Online news articles from popular and smaller, local news sites will be indexed as mentions. For example, articles from CNN, NBC, or BBC.
In addition to articles, you will see comments from news articles if the comments section is hosted by Disqus.
Blogs
Posts from blog sites, such as WordPress, Pypi, Medium, Business Wire, Mashable, Techcrunch, Business Insider, Gizmodo, IMDB, LifeHacker, and more will be indexed as mentions.
Review sites
We collect mentions from a range of Review sites including Google Play, Apple App Store, OpenTable, Flipkart, Steam Community, Best Buy, Glassdoor, Review Centre, Reviews.io, eBay, CNET, Amazon, TrustPilot and more, using our third-party data providers.
If you are interested in tracking reviews for a particular product, please contact our Support team and provide the relevant link. Our team will be happy to check if we already have coverage and if we do not, they'll be able to request coverage from our data providers.
Due to the large volume of review pages our data providers cover, any review coverage for newly added products can take up to 72 hours to process. Please note that we cannot guarantee our data providers will be able to offer coverage for all requested products.
Publicly accessible entries on Tencent QQ, also known as QQ, will be indexed as mentions.
Note:
Articles behind a paywall will not be indexed in Listen.