Getting started
Do I need monitoring if I only care about backlinks?
It helps even then. Sites that turn up while listening become Web mention opportunities in your linkbuilding feed at no extra cost, so a monitoring keyword adds to link discovery as well as telling you what people are saying.
Will it find things said before I signed up?
Only the recent past, roughly the last week or so depending on the platform. It is a listening tool rather than an archive search, so a brand that has been discussed for years starts from about now.
How long until I see something?
Adding a keyword triggers a look straight away, so there is usually something within a few minutes. If a day passes with nothing, the likeliest answer is that nobody has used that exact word publicly this week, which is common for a young brand.
Cost and limits
Do mentions cost credits?
No. Each plan includes a number of mentions per month, and monitoring stops fetching when you reach it. There is no way to run up a bill by listening for something that turns out to be popular.
What does cost credits?
Asking Serpfeed to draft a reply, at 2 credits a draft. Writing your own reply, filtering, exporting and everything else on the page is free.
What happens when I hit my monthly mentions?
Collecting pauses and a banner on the feed tells you how many mentions were not fetched. Everything already in your feed stays. The count resets at the start of each calendar month.
How long are mentions kept?
30 days on Free, 90 days on Starter, and a year on Growth and Scale. Export to CSV if you need them for longer than that.
Labels
A mention is filed under the wrong label. Can I fix it?
Yes, and the fix is better than a correction: edit the label's description in Settings, because that description is what Serpfeed is told to look for. Change it and the filing changes from the next mention onward.
Why do some mentions have no label?
Serpfeed could not confidently place them, usually because they are fragments, a different language, or genuinely ambiguous. Filter to Unlabelled to see them. A large pile there usually means something you receive regularly has no label to go to.
Can I have more than twelve labels?
No, and the limit is doing real work. Every label has to be told apart from every other one, so a long list makes all of them fuzzier. Archive one you do not use to make room.
Alerts
I built a rule and it never fires.
Check that you have not filled in more conditions than you meant to. Every condition you fill in has to be true at once, so a rule naming one platform, three labels and one sentiment is much narrower than it looks. An empty condition means any, so leaving fields blank makes a rule broader, not broken.
Why did my second alert take an hour?
Alerts slow down deliberately when a rule keeps matching: immediately, then 15 minutes, then an hour, then longer, up to once a day. Everything that arrived during the wait is bundled into the next email. After a quiet day the rule resets and the next alert is immediate again.
Can alerts go to somebody else on my team?
Yes. Each rule has its own Send to address, so bug reports can go to support and anything about a rival can go to sales, without you forwarding anything.
When something looks wrong
My feed is full of job adverts.
Add hiring and job to Excluded words in Settings. A brand name in a job advert is the single most common piece of noise in brand monitoring.
The same post keeps appearing from different sites.
Aggregators republish other people's posts. Block the domain in Settings and the copies stop while the original stays.
Does Serpfeed post my replies for me?
No. It drafts, you copy, and you post from your own account. Every one of these platforms has its own rules about automated posting, and a reply in your name should be one you decided to send.
Can I turn monitoring off?
Remove your monitoring keywords and nothing further is collected. The mentions already found stay in your feed until they age out.