5 Must-Have Filters for an Effective News API
A powerful and robust News API is an essential tool in gathering and analyzing vast amounts of information for a wide range of applications — from media monitoring and financial analysis to risk intelligence and AI solutions. An increasing number of automated data solutions and monitoring platforms have turned to news APIs so that their customers can uncover valuable insights and make informed decisions based on relevant news data. However, not all news APIs are equal. Some lack crucial filters needed to refine and contextualize insights from news content. So today, we’re highlighting 5 filters necessary for an effective News API.
#1 Social filters: unearth trending content
Social signals are representative values that indicate the popularity and social visibility of content as perceived by search engines. They represent interactions — e.g., views, shares, likes, and comments — on social media websites. Social signals are useful for automated data platforms because they help users understand content popularity and relevance.
A news API with social signal integration can identify and prioritize news articles gaining traction on social media platforms, enabling users to discover trending and engaging content quickly. Brands can also use social signals to track the popularity of their products.
Let’s say Apple releases a new product that goes viral, like AirPods. Social filters help users quickly discover content covering this new Apple product. And Apple could use these same filters to track AirPods’ popularity.
Social filters — Webz.io News API query example
This query includes news posts about Apple AirPods with more than 100 Facebook shares in the past 30 days. Add query with “Apple AirPods social.facebook.shares:>100 ”:
thread.title:(Apple AirPods) language:english country:US site_type:news social.facebook.shares:>100 is_first:true
#2 Domain rank filter: leverage authoritative sources
Some news APIs and free news datasets contain content from low-quality and spam websites. If you incorporate any of these noisy news data sources into your platform, you can’t always ensure the data is accurate or reliable. You could set up a team to clean and preprocess the data, but that would make the solution rather time-consuming and costly.
Domain rank is an essential attribute in evaluating the credibility and trustworthiness of news sources. If you choose a News API that incorporates domain rank, your platform or application can use that attribute to prioritize articles from authoritative websites. By filtering out low-ranking domains, your platform or application can enhance the quality and reliability of obtained insights.
Domain rank filter —Webz.io News API query example
This query will retrieve news data on microprocessor or microchip supply chain developments in English. It also searches for posts from the top 1,000 sites:
thread.title:(microprocessor OR microchip) AND (supply chain) language:english site_type:news is_first:true domain_rank:<1000
#3 Number of characters filter: obtain substantial information
In the past, many SEO strategists encouraged companies to create short content stuffed with keywords. This content was not intended for people to read but rather to game search engines for higher rankings. However, today search engines seek out sites with high-quality content that provide beneficial information for people, not to manipulate search engine algorithms for first-page search results.
Most companies have shifted content strategies, creating authoritative long-form content that engages readers and provides valuable information. However, numerous sites still contain the short SEO fluff of yesteryear. A news API with a “number of characters” filter enables data platforms to weed out short irrelevant content or content that lacks substantial information. They can set a minimum number of characters, ensuring that users will have access to higher-quality news content.
Num_chars filter — Webz.io News API query example
Using the query for domain rank above, if you set the num_chars value to 3000, the API will return posts with a minimum of 3000 characters in the text. That’s about 500 words. Here’s an example for a query:
thread.title:(microprocessor OR microchip) AND (supply chain) language:english site_type:news is_first:true num_chars:>3000
#4 Language and country filters: gain a better understanding of regional perceptions and events
An effective News API provides information from across the globe and lets you filter those global search results by language and country. When users can narrow down news articles to those in their preferred language, they can better comprehend the information and analysis. They can also use language and country filters to monitor product launches or current events in specific countries.
Let’s say you’re a media intelligence company, and one of your customers is Nike. The company just released new Air Jordan basketball shoes, and the product team wants to know how well these new shoes are perceived in a few Latin American countries, like Mexico and Brazil. Using a news API with language and country filters, the team could monitor local news publications for reactions to these new Nike products. The posts from these publications would be written in Spanish and Portuguese.
Language and country filters — Webz.io News API query example
A query for the above product monitoring scenario — with multiple country and language filters — could look like this:
thread.title:(Air Jordan) (language:spanish OR language:portuguese) (country:MX OR country:BR) site_type:news is_first:true
#5 Site category filter: contextualize insights
News is ubiquitous — every industry has it. Some sites offer news in a broad range of categories, while others specialize in a specific industry like sports or gaming. An effective News API allows users to select news content and obtain insights tailored to specific industries, interests, or niches. It provides contextualized insights from specific domains and categories.
Let’s say one of your customers is a renowned fashion design company based in New York. The company uses your media monitoring solution to analyze fashion news content worldwide. If you integrated a news API with a category filter, the company could gain insights from major fashion events worldwide or specific fashion shows like Paris Fashion Week.
Site category filter — Webz.io News API query example
The Webz.io News API supports dozens of Site Category Values, including sports, games, fashion, entertainment, finance, and internet technology.
This query would retrieve fashion news specific to Paris Fashion Week in French:
thread.title:(paris fashion week OR Vogue) AND (clothes OR fashion OR designers) language:french country:FR site_type:news site_category:fashion is_first:true
Get better insights from news content with filters
When you have a news API with these powerful five filters, you can avoid going through a lot of unwanted and irrelevant news content. You can provide your users with highly relevant and contextualized insights from news data. Your users can also easily fine-tune queries to get the insights they need faster. You don’t have to use all five filters every time to gain valuable insights. But you should find a news API that includes all five filters for cases that require a more granular search.
Want to learn more about the Webz.io News API and its filters? Talk to one of our experts
