Keyword monitors, source scans and pain clusters

Three ways to hear what people say about a market without searching every forum yourself: a keyword monitor keeps watching for new posts, a source scan looks back over a past window in one go, and pain clusters group the library's niches into themes every week.

Keyword monitors

A keyword monitor watches public discussions for your keywords on Hacker News, Stack Exchange and GitHub, plus any other source the form lists at the time. Each new post it finds is tagged by intent: "Pain", "Request", "Competitor" or "Buying intent", or "Untagged" when no tag was given. The tags are written by AI; the counts are TrendGap's own.

Keyword monitors are on paid plans. They are checked daily on Pro and above and weekly on other paid plans. The page shows how many monitors your plan includes and how many you use.

Create a monitor

1. Open "Market Radar" and choose the "Keyword monitors" tab, or click Keyword monitors under Market Radar in the menu.
2. In "New keyword monitor", give it a "Name" and add your keywords under "Keywords", one per line or comma separated.
3. Pick at least one source under "Sources".
4. Click "Create monitor".

Read what it found

Each monitor shows its keywords, its status ("Active, checked daily" or "Active, checked weekly"), when it was last checked, when the next check is due and how many posts are new. Click "View posts" to read them, filter them by intent, and use "Mark all read" when you are done. Each post links to the original discussion. When Inbox is on your menu, a check that found new posts also leaves a note there under "Summaries".

• "Edit keywords", "Pause" or "Resume", and "Delete" (click twice to confirm) sit on each monitor.
• Each monitor has a monthly allowance for your plan. When it is used up, the monitor says "This period's limit is reached: checks resume next period".
• If your plan gets smaller, the newest monitors over the limit are paused, never deleted, and come back when there is room.

Source scan

A source scan is a one-off look back over the last 7, 30 or 90 days. It searches Hacker News, Stack Exchange and GitHub for your keywords, and can also read the reviews and support topics of an app, plugin or add-on listing you name. It groups what it finds into pains, and gives quotes and an idea for each pain. It is a tool that costs credits, it is on paid plans, and it needs both Market Radar and Tools on your menu.

1. Open Tools and choose "Source scan".
2. Pick a "Window". Each option shows its credits.
3. Under "Search by keyword", pick sources and type your keywords, comma separated.
4. Under "Read a listing's reviews and support topics", you can add the link of an iPhone or Android app, a WordPress.org plugin or a Firefox add-on, with the "Store country (2 letters)" if the form asks for it.
5. Click "Run scan". The button shows the credits again.

The scan works in the background and a note in your inbox tells you when it is ready. Results show "Items found", "Sources with items" and "Pains". Each pain's label, summary and idea are written by AI; counts and quotes come from the sources. If part of the scan does not come back, the note says how many credits it kept, and the rest go back to your balance. More in How tools work.

Pain clusters

When Trends is on your menu, Pain clusters sits under it, on every plan. Every Monday after the weekly measurements, related niches are grouped by meaning into themes, drawn as a ring. Trend topics, incumbent apps and websites join the theme they are closest to. Pick a theme on the ring to see what it holds; "How themes are found" on the page explains the method.

Paid plans see each theme's name, its summary when it has one (marked "AI summary" or "Written by the TrendGap team"), its counts and every member. Free sees unnamed themes such as "Theme 1", each with the niches Free can open today.