A Reddit monitoring tool finds new threads and comments that mention your brand, products or competitors and alerts you before a discussion grows. MentionRadar collects Reddit mentions every 15 minutes, scores sentiment and reach, and also shows when ChatGPT or Perplexity cite those threads.
r/bikecommuting: Kestrel Bikes or Fieldnote Cycles for a 15 km commute
Thread with 84 comments, most recommend Kestrel for the frame, two complain about delivery times.
r/ebikes: Kestrel battery died after 14 months, warranty experience
Original poster says support replaced the pack but took three weeks to reply.
r/cycling: Finally rode the new Kestrel gravel frame
Long review with photos, praises handling and the price compared with two rivals.
Ask HN: what is your commute setup
One comment links a Kestrel Bikes blog post on cargo bike maintenance.
Reddit is where buyers ask each other what to buy. It is also one of the sources AI engines read before they answer the same question.
People add "reddit" to product searches because they want opinions from users with nothing to sell. A thread titled "is X worth it" or "X vs Y" often ranks well in search for years and keeps collecting comments. One unanswered complaint about billing or support can sit at the top of that thread and meet every prospect who looks you up. Most companies hear about such threads from a sales call, weeks after they started.
When someone asks Perplexity, ChatGPT with search or Google AI Overviews for the best product in a category, the answer frequently cites Reddit threads next to review sites and comparison articles. The thread becomes part of the evidence the engine summarises. Monitoring Reddit is therefore also monitoring one of the inputs of your AI visibility, and MentionRadar shows both on one dashboard.
“best commuter e-bike under 2,000 dollars”
Commuters on Reddit often recommend the Kestrel Metro for its frame and range, while Fieldnote Cycles is praised for faster delivery. Brightpath is a lower cost option.
Redditors rarely write your full legal name. Track the short brand name, the main product name and common misspellings or abbreviations. Starter includes 3 keywords and Growth 10, so spend them on the forms that appear in real threads rather than slogans.
If your name is also a common word, a game, a place or a sports team, list the words that only appear in that other context. A mention containing an exclusion word is dropped before it reaches your feed. MentionRadar matches brand names as whole words, so "Kestrel" does not match inside longer words.
Each mention links to the original thread, so the community it came from is one click away. After a week, note which subreddits produce useful mentions and which produce noise, then refine exclusions around the noisy ones. Competitor names belong here too, because "X vs Y" threads are where buyers decide.
Send instant alerts only for negative mentions or threads with high reach, and let everything else go to the daily digest. Growth adds Slack alerts and custom rules on sentiment, reach, source and keyword, so Reddit can go to a community channel while news goes to comms.
Keyword
Kestrel
Exclude mentions containing
Sources
A Reddit thread has a short window in which a calm, factual reply changes its direction. After a day, the top comments are set and later replies are rarely read. That is why speed matters more on Reddit than on almost any other source.
MentionRadar collects new mentions every 15 minutes. Rules decide where each one goes: a negative thread with high reach goes to Slack or email at once, a positive review waits for the daily digest, an answer change in an AI engine goes to the SEO channel. Reach is estimated per source, and the alert shows the thread title, community and link so the person on duty can decide in seconds.
Battery died after 14 months, warranty experience
r/ebikes, reach 41.3k
Kestrel Bikes or Fieldnote Cycles for a 15 km commute
r/bikecommuting, 84 comments
37 Reddit mentions, 1 needs attention
r/cycling, r/ebikes, r/bikecommuting
Monitoring finds the thread. What happens next is a human decision. These habits work for most brands.
Many subreddits restrict self promotion or require a flair for company accounts. Breaking a rule gets the reply removed and draws more attention than the complaint.
Use an account that says who you are. A fresh anonymous account defending a brand is spotted quickly and becomes the story.
Reply when you can solve the problem, correct a clear error or share a policy. If you have nothing new to add, an upvote and silence is often the better choice.
Offer a support channel for order numbers and account data. Never ask a user to post personal information in the thread.
Vote manipulation breaks site rules and can get links to your domain filtered. Let good answers rise on their own.
A short note that the issue is resolved often turns a negative thread into evidence of good support, which is what later readers and AI engines see.
MentionRadar does not post or reply for you, and it never needs access to your Reddit account. For the wider view of how opinion moves across all sources, see reputation monitoring software.
For software, developer tools and anything technical, Hacker News plays the role Reddit plays for consumer products. The audience is smaller and more concentrated: engineers, founders and investors. A front page discussion can bring a wave of signups, or a detailed critique that people quote for years.
MentionRadar monitors Hacker News on every plan, with the same keywords, exclusions, sentiment and alerts as Reddit. Both communities sit in one feed, so a launch that is discussed in a subreddit and in a "Show HN" thread appears as one story. Teams that also watch X can add the Twitter monitoring tool view to the same workspace.
| Hacker News | ||
|---|---|---|
| Typical audience | Consumers and professionals by topic | Engineers, founders, investors |
| Typical brand thread | Recommendation, complaint, comparison | Launch, technical critique, outage |
| Life of a thread | Days, long tail in search | Hours on the front page |
| Cited by AI engines | Often | Sometimes, for technical topics |
| Included in MentionRadar | Every plan | Every plan |
It searches public Reddit posts and comments for your keywords, collects each match with its link, time and community, and alerts you when a mention meets your rules. MentionRadar does this every 15 minutes on paid plans and puts Reddit next to news, forums, reviews, YouTube, X and AI answers.
No. MentionRadar monitors public posts and comments and never asks for your Reddit login. It also never posts, votes or replies for you, so every response in a thread comes from a real person on your team.
Add exclusion words that signal the wrong meaning of your name, for example game titles or slang that share it, and use whole word matching to avoid partial hits. Alert rules on sentiment and reach keep only the threads worth reading in your inbox or Slack.
AI engines such as Perplexity and Google AI Overviews often cite Reddit threads as sources when they answer product questions. A thread that recommends a competitor can shape the AI answer buyers read. On Growth and higher plans, MentionRadar shows which pages, Reddit threads included, the engines cite.
No. Reply when you can add a fact, fix a problem or correct a clear error, and do it openly as the company. Threads that are opinions or jokes usually need no reply. Monitoring helps you choose by showing reach, sentiment and how the thread develops.
Reddit is included on every plan with no add-on. Starter is $24 a month billed yearly for 3 keywords and 5,000 mentions a month, and Growth is $74 a month yearly with Slack alerts and custom alert rules.
Scan your brand across Reddit, Hacker News, news sites and an AI engine. The first mentions appear in about a minute, before you create an account.