Agility’s Keyword Search feature allows you to find journalists based on what they’ve written — not just by the predefined subjects in the database. By matching your search terms against published content, you can quickly identify who is covering niche topics, specific industries, competitors, or emerging issues.
This also includes non-traditional media contacts such as bloggers and influencers who may not have an assigned beat but are writing about the subjects important to your campaign.
Note: Search results are capped at just under 10,000 contacts. To ensure full visibility of your results, use specific and focused keywords that generate fewer than 10,000 mentions.
* More on this at the end of the article.
🔹 Using the Keyword Search
To begin, open the Mentioned Keyword field and type in your chosen keyword or phrase.
For example, if you enter “Recycled Plastic”, Agility will search all monitored coverage and return contacts who have published content containing that phrase within the last 90 days.
You can also expand or refine your search using Boolean logic:
OR – Include results mentioning any of your keywords.
AND – Include only contacts who have used all of your keywords (not necessarily in the same article).
NOT – Exclude contacts using a specific word or phrase.
When your search is ready, click Search to review your results.
🔹Refine the Results
If your results are too broad, narrow them by applying additional filters.
For example, to find journalists who specialize in recycling, move to the Covering Subjects field and select Recycling. This will show only those who are assigned to cover that beat and have also recently published content about Recycled Plastic.
You can add multiple subjects or apply other filters, such as:
Job role or title
Outlet media type
Location or language
When you’ve set your filters, click Search again to update the results.
🔹Review the Results
The results screen gives you a clear overview of your search:
The middle panel lists your contact results.
The filters appear across the top for quick refinement.
The right-hand panel displays media and profile information for the selected contact.
To see each journalist’s published content, switch the right-hand panel to Recent Coverage. From here, you can view the articles they’ve written and filter to highlight only the pieces containing your keyword.
If you’re an Agility Monitoring user, you can save and manage mentions or create monitoring topics directly from this view. You can also apply media type filters to focus on articles only, excluding social media content if you prefer.
🔹Check and Add Contacts to a List
Before adding contacts to a list, you can check whether they are already included in one of your existing lists:
Hover over the dropdown menu labeled Select List(s) to add contacts to.
Choose the list you want to compare against.
Contacts already on the selected list will show a blue checkmark beside their name.
To add new contacts:
Check the box beside each contact you’d like to add.
Click Add to List(s) to save them to your chosen list.
🔹Save and Reuse Your Search
You can save your keyword search for future use. When you reopen it, Agility automatically applies the same criteria so you can:
Review new and updated contacts since your last search.
Compare them against those already added to your targeted lists.
This makes it easy to maintain an up-to-date list and keep your outreach relevant over time.
🔹Understanding Keyword Search Limits
Every targeting search in Agility is limited to 10,000 results. This ensures a manageable dataset and maintains system performance.
When you run a keyword search:
Agility retrieves up to 10,000 articles matching your search terms.
These articles are then matched with contacts in the Agility database.
A small percentage of contacts (fewer than 5%) may not appear because they are inactive or under review.
When you apply filters, they are applied to this dataset of roughly 9,500 results. Depending on your filters, your final view may contain fewer contacts.
This approach provides you with a focused, high-quality list of media contacts who have recently written about your search topics.
🔹Why OR Logic Doesn’t Always Increase Results
Adding more terms with the OR operator doesn’t simply add new results to your existing list. Each time you modify your terms, Agility re-runs the entire search to create a new, optimized dataset.
For example:
Searching for “apples” may return 5,000 contacts.
Adding “oranges” (as OR) runs a new search for “apples OR oranges”, which may produce a different set of contacts, still limited to around 10,000 results.
This ensures your results remain relevant, balanced, and efficient to work with.
Summary
Agility’s Keyword Search is a powerful way to discover and connect with journalists based on what they’re actually writing about. By refining your search terms, applying relevant filters, and saving your searches, you can build dynamic, accurate, and continually updated media lists for effective outreach.
📝 Support & Resources
Help Center: Media Relations
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