Use casesMedia monitoring
Media monitoring, as an API.
Watch brands, people, competitors and topics from your own code: one query per item, run on a schedule, with tone and same-story grouping on every result. A Google Alerts alternative for developers — JSON instead of emails.
POST /v1/searchmode: "fast" · $1.40 per 1,000 queries
The problem
Alerts built for inboxes, not for code
Most monitoring starts with Google Alerts. It is free and covers a lot of the web, but it was built for people: it sends emails or an RSS feed, there is no official API, and nothing on each alert says how relevant it is, what its tone is, or that ten outlets ran the same wire story.
Media-monitoring suites solve that with dashboards and seats. If you are building your own product, agent or internal tool, you need the raw material instead: a request per watchlist item, results you can threshold, and the same story counted once.
Google Alerts or an API
What changes when monitoring runs in your code.
| Google Alerts or an API | Google Alerts | typesearch |
|---|---|---|
| Delivery | Email or RSS feed | JSON over HTTPS, or a stream of events |
| Relevance | Google decides what to send | A calibrated probability on every result; you pick the threshold |
| Tone | Not included | Positive, neutral or negative toward your query |
| Same story, many outlets | Each one arrives separately | Grouped into one result, with the duplicates attached |
| Filters | Language, region, sources: broad settings | Domains, sections and time windows per request |
| Price | Free | $1.40 per 1,000 queries |
Google Alerts is free and searches far more of the web. If an email a day is all you need, keep it.
How it works
- 01
One query per item
A brand, a person, a competitor or a topic. Send up to five in one request: they are judged together and each result says which query it answers.
- 02
Run it on a schedule
Every hour, or every 15 minutes, with days: 1 — or published_after set to your last run so you only see what is new.
- 03
Keep what clears your bar
Every result carries the probability that it is about your query. Keep 0.65 and up; between 0.35 and 0.65 we say undecided instead of guessing.
- 04
Tone and the same story once
tone: true adds positive, neutral or negative toward your query. dedupe: true folds the same story from many outlets into one result.
API
The request
One request does it. The same parameters work over HTTP, with the SDKs and through the MCP server.
What it costs
Recommended · fast$1.40 per 1,000 queries
Fast judges headlines and standfirsts, about a second per request: enough for alerts on names that appear in the headline.
Also good · normal$2.20 per 1,000 queries
Normal reads the top 4 before ranking them. Use it when a false alert costs more than $2.20 per 1,000.
An example month
50 watchlist items, checked every hour for 30 days
36,000 queries in fast mode ≈ $50.40
List prices from our pricing page. Each query in a multi-query request counts as one search; identical requests within 10 minutes are free.
curl https://api.typesearch.ai/v1/search \-H "Authorization: Bearer $TYPESEARCH_API_KEY" \-H "Content-Type: application/json" \-d '{"query": ["Acme Corp", "Acme recall", "Globex vs Acme"],"mode": "fast","days": 1,"max_results": 20,"tone": true,"dedupe": true}'
What you get back
- Title, URL, source and publication time of every article
- score: the probability it is about your query
- tone: positive, neutral or negative toward your query
- duplicates: the same story from other outlets
- The outlet’s own standfirst as snippet — never the full article
When to use something else
- You need print, TV, radio or social media monitoring: we index news sites.
- You need years of history for a report: our index keeps a rolling 30 days.
- You want dashboards and seats for a PR team rather than an API: a media-monitoring suite fits better.
One result, trimmed
{"title": "Acme recalls 40,000 heaters after overheating reports","url": "https://wire.example/business/acme-recall","source": "Example Wire","published_at": "2026-09-25T09:12:00Z","score": 0.96,"tone": { "label": "negative", "basis": "article" },"duplicates": [{ "title": "Acme retira 40.000 estufas", "url": "https://diarioejemplo.example/economia/acme", "source": "Diario Ejemplo" }]}
Questions
Is there a Google Alerts API?
Google doesn’t offer an official API for Google Alerts: alerts arrive by email or as an RSS feed. A news search API does the same job from your code — a query, a time window and a list of articles — with relevance, tone and grouping you can program against.
How often should I check?
Hourly is enough for most brands; every 15 minutes for a crisis or a launch. Busy sources are re-read every few minutes, so checking more often than that rarely finds more.
How do I avoid sending the same alert twice?
Set published_after to the time of your last run and keep the URLs you’ve already sent. dedupe: true also folds the same story from several outlets into one result.
What does it cost to monitor 50 items every hour?
36,000 queries in fast mode ≈ $50.40 at list price. An identical request within 10 minutes is free, and there are no seats or monthly minimums.
Can typesearch push alerts to me?
Not yet: Monitors, with webhooks when your topic moves, are coming. Today you run the search on a schedule — a cron job or a workflow tool is enough.
Keep reading
Products
Build it this afternoon.
Get a key with $5 in free credit, run the request above and see what comes back.