Recipes / Track what is being written about your competitors

Track what is being written about your competitors

/stories in hybrid mode. This page is the operational half — what comes back, how it breaks, and what running it for real takes.

The request

GET /stories
  ?q=<competitor name>
  &mode=hybrid
  &from=<last poll>

# one query per competitor, never an OR query

As a call you can paste:

curl -s -G "https://api.unzoi.com/stories" \
  -H "x-api-key: $UNZOI_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "q=<competitor name>" \
  --data-urlencode "mode=hybrid" \
  --data-urlencode "from=<last poll>"

For an agent rather than a script, the same query is the list_stories MCP tool with these as its arguments.

Parameters used here

• from
• mode
• q

What comes back

Story clusters per company. Comparing outlet counts between competitors over the same window is a rough share-of-attention measure that needs no extra tooling.

Field by field: the /stories response reference.

How this goes wrong

Treating volume as sentiment. A competitor with a spike in coverage may be having a very bad week. Check tone or read the headlines before drawing a conclusion.

Adapting it

Swap the company for a product line, a brand or an executive and the shape holds, though a person needs a disambiguating term where a company usually does not. To compare share of coverage rather than track mentions, run the same query per competitor over an identical window and compare story counts rather than article counts — article counts reward whoever has the widest syndication deal, which is not the same as whoever is being discussed most.

Running it for real

Poll on a schedule with a per-company last-seen timestamp. Track the outlet count trend rather than the raw article count — a competitor whose coverage is broadening across independent publishers is doing something different from one whose own press releases are being picked up.

Related recipes

• Follow a sector, but only in publications you trust
• Track a brand across every language you don't read

Why this approach

The case for these parameters over the obvious alternatives — and when this recipe is the wrong tool entirely — is on the recipe's page on unzoi.com. It is kept there rather than repeated here, so the argument and the operations cannot drift apart.