Sentiment analysis and brand management SaaS tools enable users to find brand mentions and categorize emotions in texts in a matter of a few clicks. These solutions make it easier for users to stay tuned to the online conversation happening around their brand.
At DataForSEO, we’re helping our customers to collect brand or keyword mentions from across the web, and automatically score sentiment polarity and more advanced emotions using our multilingual (70+ lang.) Content Analysis API.
In this guide, we will carefully illustrate how it can streamline the creation of essential brand management functionality.
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Project Setup
Mentions Overview
Sentiment Overview
Project Setup
The project setup is the first screen a user sees. It contains all elements necessary for creating a new project and defining target keywords and categories to monitor. While the project name is merely a convenience for users, keyword and category inputs are necessary for the development side. Configuring these two inputs correctly ensures you get the right data in the tool’s further functionality.
Components
Keyword Input
Keyword Input is a vital component of the Project Setup as you will be using the values from here when making API calls for almost all further functionality.
The keywords a user enters here may relate to a brand, product, competitors, industry, or any other topic they want to monitor.
A keyword input should be copied to the target keyword field in the body of your POST requests. Note that for each keyword a user enters in the Project Setup, you’ll need to make a separate call to each of the following Content Analysis API endpoints:
Example request to the Summary endpoint:
# Instead of 'login' and 'password' use your credentials from https://app.dataforseo.com/api-dashboard
login="login"
password="password"
cred="$(printf ${login}:${password} | base64)"
curl --location --request POST "https://api.dataforseo.com/v3/content_analysis/summary/live"
--header "Authorization: Basic ${cred}"
--header "Content-Type: application/json"
--data-raw "[
{
"keyword": "logitech"
}
]"
Category Input
Category Input is an optional element of the Project Setup. If a user wants to review sentiment trends of all mentions in a specific category(-ies), they can indicate the desired categories here.
You’ll need to use these input values in the body of your POST request(s) to the Category Trends endpoint to get data for the graphs in Sentiment Over Time by Category.
Note that Content Analysis API supports a predefined list of categories which you can find here. Therefore, we recommend designing the Categories Input as a dropdown list where a user can select the necessary category from the supported ones upon entering a part of, or a full term the category name should contain.
You can use the free Categories endpoint to display the full list of available category names and match them with relevant category codes.
Example category data from the Categories endpoint:
{
"category_code": 10937,
"category_name": "Bags & Packs",
"category_code_parent": 10178
}
When making API calls to the Category Trends endpoint, you’ll need to indicate the target category code in the category_code field. For each separate category input, make a new API request with the relevant code.
Example request to the Category Trends endpoint:
# Instead of 'login' and 'password' use your credentials from https://app.dataforseo.com/api-dashboard
login="login"
password="password"
cred="$(printf ${login}:${password} | base64)"
curl --location --request POST "https://api.dataforseo.com/v3/content_analysis/category_trends/live"
--header "Authorization: Basic ${cred}"
--header "Content-Type: application/json"
--data-raw "[
{
"category_code": 10994,
"search_mode": "as_is",
"date_from": "2022-09-01",
"date_group": "month"
}
]
Mentions Overview
This handy dashboard provides users with a stream of valuable web mentions data in an organized way. Besides the details of each web mention, such as content snippet and sentiment, this view also offers citation stats broken down by country and content language.
In order to build this informative report, you’ll only need to use two endpoints from the DataForSEO Content Analysis API: Search and Summary.
Components
Web Mentions Overview
A quality overview of web mentions gives users all key details about the mentions of the target keywords they entered. Advanced Filters by sentiment, country & more, allow users to cut through the noise and focus on what matters.
You can create this feature atop the Content Analysis API – Search endpoint.
If you’d like the results to appear in a certain order (e.g. from most negative to most positive mentions), specify the order_by parameter accordingly.
Use the filters parameter in the body of your POST request to the Search endpoint to filter the results by country, sentiment polarity (e.g. negative), etc.
Example request:
# Instead of 'login' and 'password' use your credentials from https://app.dataforseo.com/api-dashboard
login="login"
password="password"
cred="$(printf ${login}:${password} | base64)"
curl --location --request POST "https://api.dataforseo.com/v3/content_analysis/search/live"
--header "Authorization: Basic ${cred}"
--header "Content-Type: application/json"
--data-raw "
[
{
"keyword": "logitech",
"filters": [
"main_domain",
"=",
"reviewfinder.ca"
],
"order_by": [
"content_info.sentiment_connotations.anger,desc"
],
"limit": 5
}
]"
The components below are based on data from the Search endpoint response. See an example response code in our docs.
Use total_count data from the API response to display the number of all discovered mentions. If you make several API calls to track several keywords, calculate the sum of numbers provided in the total_count field of each response to display this information.
Use relative_rating to display rating data. Note that different sources utilize different rating scales. For example, in one case "rating_value": 5 may be the highest rating, while in another case it may be too low (e.g. if "max_rating_value": 100). That is why we recommend using this relative_rating as it is a universal rating value in our system.
Use data from the connotation_types object if you’d like to display sentiment polarity (positive, negative, neutral). Alternatively, you can use data from the sentiment_connotations object to highlight emotional reactions (anger, happiness, love, sadness, share, fun).
Use text_category to indicate the category of a given mention. In the API response, you’ll get a category code. To display a category name, find it by searching for the necessary code in the response of our free Categories endpoint.
Use data from the snippet field of the content_info object to provide the text of the mention.
Mentions by Country
The map view highlights which countries mention the user’s target keywords more. The closer to the green shade, the more mentions a user gets from the domain registered in the respective country. The countries in grey are those mentioning no target keywords.
You can implement this feature by using data from the Content Analysis API – Summary endpoint.
Note that to obtain the maximum number of countries that mention your target keywords, you should set the internal_list_limit parameter to 20 (max value) in the body of your POST request.
Example request:
# Instead of 'login' and 'password' use your credentials from https://app.dataforseo.com/api-dashboard
login="login"
password="password"
cred="$(printf ${login}:${password} | base64)"
curl --location --request POST "https://api.dataforseo.com/v3/content_analysis/summary/live"
--header "Authorization: Basic ${cred}"
--header "Content-Type: application/json"
--data-raw "[
{
"keyword": "logitech",
"internal_list_limit": 20
}
]"
Use the number from the total_count field of the API response as 100% of mentions for the map. If you need data on several keywords, make separate API calls, and calculate 100% as the sum of numbers from the total_count of API response for each keyword.
To display the distribution of mentions by country, take data from the countries object. If needed, sum up the number of mentions per country for all monitored keywords. For example, if you get 10 mentions of keyword1 and 20 mentions of keyword2 from the US, you should display 30 as the number of mentions from the US in total.
Mentions by Language
This pie chart gives users a peek into the languages most frequently used to cite their target keywords.
Similarly to the previous feature, data for this chart can be found in the responses of the Content Analysis API – Summary endpoint.
If you’d like to display both Mentions by Country and Mentions by Language, you don’t need to make separate API calls to get data for this pie chart.
Simply use data from the languages object of the same response(s), and calculate the percentages in the same way as we previously explained.
If you want to build the pie chart only, note that you should set the internal_list_limit parameter to 20 (max value) when making a POST request to the Summary endpoint. This will ensure you obtain the maximum number of languages used to mention your target keywords.
Example request:
# Instead of 'login' and 'password' use your credentials from https://app.dataforseo.com/api-dashboard
login="login"
password="password"
cred="$(printf ${login}:${password} | base64)"
curl --location --request POST "https://api.dataforseo.com/v3/content_analysis/summary/live"
--header "Authorization: Basic ${cred}"
--header "Content-Type: application/json"
--data-raw "[
{
"keyword": "logitech",
"internal_list_limit": 20
}
]"
Sentiment Overview
This part of the dashboard reveals a full 360 view of how customers and stakeholders view a user’s brand, product, or company. Sentiment stats presented in this report can reveal critical insights about what a business is doing right or wrong.
From detailed Sentiment distribution by emotions and rating to sentiment trend timeline – all of the features in this dashboard can be based on the following endpoints of DataForSEO Content Analysis API: Sentiment Analysis, Phrase Trends, and Rating Distribution.
Components
Sentiment Summary
The key element of this dashboard - Sentiment Summary - communicates detailed brand reputation through a wheel chart. Relying on this visualization, users can conveniently observe the correlation between the number of positive, negative, and neutral mentions, while also diving into the distribution of mentions by emotions within each polarity.
At the same time, you can fully rely on the Sentiment Analysis endpoint of our API to build this chart.
Example request:
# Instead of 'login' and 'password' use your credentials from https://app.dataforseo.com/api-dashboard
login="login"
password="password"
cred="$(printf ${login}:${password} | base64)"
curl --location --request POST "https://api.dataforseo.com/v3/content_analysis/sentiment_analysis/live"
--header "Authorization: Basic ${cred}"
--header "Content-Type: application/json"
--data-raw "[
{
"keyword": "logitech"
}
]"
The response data has a tree structure, making it rather intuitive to find the data necessary for the Sentiment Summary wheel. Below, we will show and describe the response fields you need to use for this feature.
Example response:
{
"version": "0.1.20220819",
"status_code": 20000,
"status_message": "Ok.",
"time": "23.0121 sec.",
"cost": 0.02003,
"tasks_count": 1,
"tasks_error": 0,
"tasks": [
{
"id": "11091707-1535-0465-0000-07fd1ba1463b",
"status_code": 20000,
"status_message": "Ok.",
"time": "22.9506 sec.",
"cost": 0.02003,
"result_count": 1,
"path": [...],
"data": {...},
"result": [
{
"type": "content_analysis_sentiment_analysis",
"positive_connotation_distribution": {
"positive": {...},
"negative": {...},
"neutral": {
"type": "content_analysis_summary",
"total_count": 2854419,
"rank": 638,
"top_domains": [...],
"sentiment_connotations": {
"anger": 48,
"happiness": 72433,
"love": 2073,
"sadness": 757,
"share": 90082,
"fun": 2248
},
"connotation_types": {...},
"text_categories": [...],
"page_categories": [...],
"page_types": {...},
"countries": {...},
"languages": {...}
}
},
"sentiment_connotation_distribution": {...}
}
]
}
]
}
Note that in case you should combine data for several keywords, you’ll need to calculate the sum of relevant total_count fields, and the sum of mentions with each relevant emotion for all keywords.
Let’s say, you monitor two keywords. Keyword1 has 10 positive mentions, 5 of which reflect happiness, while keyword2 has 15 positive mentions, 9 of which reflect happiness. In this case, the positive area of your chart should represent 10+15=25 mentions, and the happiness part of it should represent 5+9=14 mentions.
Sentiment by Rating
The Sentiment by Rating pie charts illustrate the distribution of sentiment polarity by rating. Based on this data, users can get some clues for further analysis of contradictory rating-sentiment matches, such as mentions with positive sentiment and low ratings, and vice versa.
Each separate chart of this feature represents the proportion of sentiments within a specific rating score (from 1 to 4). All charts indicate the total count of keyword mentions with the relevant rating.
To assist you with building the Sentiment by Rating pie charts, DataForSEO Content Analysis API provides a dedicated Rating Distribution endpoint.
Example request:
# Instead of 'login' and 'password' use your credentials from https://app.dataforseo.com/api-dashboard
login="login"
password="password"
cred="$(printf ${login}:${password} | base64)"
curl --location --request POST "https://api.dataforseo.com/v3/content_analysis/rating_distribution/live"
--header "Authorization: Basic ${cred}"
--header "Content-Type: application/json"
--data-raw "[
{
"keyword": "logitech",
"search_mode": "as_is"
"internal_list_limit": 10
}
]"
The API response will contain citation stats grouped within a set of two rating scores (min and max) that differ by 0.1. To build a chart like the one on our sketch, use the connotation_types object with the distribution of citations by polarity for each rating score interval. To indicate the overall number of mentions within a certain rating interval, use data from the total_count parameter.
Note that min and max rating scores are based on universal rating values used in our system. The thing is, different sources utilize different rating scales. For example, in one case "rating_value": 5 may be the highest rating, while in another case it may be too low (e.g. if "max_rating_value": 100). That is why we have come up with a ready-made universal rating value in our system which can be easily converted into a simple 1 to 5 or other type of scoring.
Keep in mind that designing this feature for several keywords, you should make separate API calls to Rating Distribution with one keyword at a time. In this case, you should summarize values from the necessary fields within identical sets of rating scores.
For example, in API response for keyword1 you have 53 positive mentions within 0-0.1 min-max rating interval, while for keyword2 you have 30 positive mentions. Accordingly, the positive part of your chart should correspond to 53+30=83 positive mentions.
Sentiment Over Time
The Sentiment Over Time graph plots the proportion and fluctuations of positive, neutral, and negative sentiment in a user’s mentions over the indicated date range.
Keeping tabs on this graph is a convenient way to track the audience’s attitude toward a brand or product and investigate when it started improving or deteriorating.
To obtain data for this feature, you’ll need to call the Phrase Trends endpoint of Content Analysis API, and indicate the desired keyword, date range, and time range which will be used to group the results (by day, week, or month).
Note that date_from - the starting date of the time range - is a required parameter in the Phrase Trends endpoint requests. Accordingly, you need to determine a default time range for this feature (for example, one year or two years). You can also provide users with an option to change the starting date, however, with every date change, you’ll need to make a new API request.
Example request:
# Instead of 'login' and 'password' use your credentials from https://app.dataforseo.com/api-dashboard
login="login"
password="password"
cred="$(printf ${login}:${password} | base64)"
curl --location --request POST "https://api.dataforseo.com/v3/content_analysis/phrase_trends/live"
--header "Authorization: Basic ${cred}"
--header "Content-Type: application/json"
--data-raw "[
{
"keyword": "logitech",
"date_from": "2022-09-01",
"date_group": "month"
}
]"
The stats you receive in the API response will be grouped by a specific date. You’ll need to use data on the number of mentions from the connotation_types object and relevant dates to build the Sentiment Over Time feature.
If you create this feature based on data for several keywords, make separate API requests for each keyword, and calculate the sum of mentions for the same date within identical connotation_types for all keywords.
Refer to our docs to see the response.
Sentiment Over Time by Category
Similarly to the previous feature, this visualization plots the sentiment polarity over time. Yet, here, users will see the overall trend in the selected category(-ies).
Given this, Sentiment Over Time By Category presents users with an opportunity to inspect market trends and compare their progress with the prevailing sentiment in their target category.
To offer this feature, incorporate the Category Trends endpoint of Content Analysis API.
When making an API call, use data from the Category Input in the body of your POST request. Note that you’ll need to indicate category codes, not names. For each separate category, make a new API request.
You can obtain the full list of available category codes and review category names by using the free Categories endpoint.
Besides indicating the target category_code, specify these required parameters: date_from - the starting date of the time range, and date_group - the time range which will be used to group the results (by day, week, or month).
Example request:
# Instead of 'login' and 'password' use your credentials from https://app.dataforseo.com/api-dashboard
login="login"
password="password"
cred="$(printf ${login}:${password} | base64)"
curl --location --request POST "https://api.dataforseo.com/v3/content_analysis/category_trends/live"
--header "Authorization: Basic ${cred}"
--header "Content-Type: application/json"
--data-raw "[
{
"category_code": 10994,
"date_from": "2022-09-01",
"date_group": "month"
}
]"
Once you receive the results in the response, use data from the connotation_types object along with relevant date to create this graph. To indicate the name of the relevant category, you can use data from the free Categories endpoint.
See the response example in our docs.
Review Monitoring
Review monitoring tools offer a range of features that help businesses keep track of customer feedback, assess client needs, and maintain an impeccable online reputation. This guide will give you precise instructions for building review monitoring features based on Reviews API from DataForSEO.
Content Analysis API
Content Analysis API will ensure your brand monitoring solution can quickly search for brand mentions and keyword citations across the web and get all the related data in real-time. It also provides a sophisticated sentiment analysis algorithm that can be easily integrated into your solution.