Managing queries
Creating queries
Go to Project settings → Queries. You can:- Add one by hand — click New Query.
- Import a spreadsheet — the upload icon opens Import queries. Columns are matched by header
name:
query,language,country,type,tags. Download the template from the dialog. Tick Only update tags associations to re-tag queries you already have instead of creating new ones. The file must be 5 MB or smaller, and every bad row is reported at once rather than one at a time. - Accept AI suggestions — during project creation, MentionLab analyses your website and proposes prompts.
Query properties
Bulk operations
Select rows, then use the Actions menu:- Add tags / Remove tags on many queries at once
- Set type
- Delete
There is no export button on this page. Query exports live on Project settings → Export data,
as the Queries Summary export type.
Reading query results
The Queries analysis page grades every query:
Each numeric column has a min/max range filter in its header. Click a row to open Query Analysis,
which adds:
- Six metric cards: Total Responses, Mention Rate, Avg. Sentiment, Source Rate, Shopping Rate and Ad Rate
- Top Sources and Sources by Model
- Response History — every individual run, with the full response text, entity chips, its source list and any Sponsored ads it carried
- Entities Mentioned and Top Products
Query tags
Creating tags
Project settings → Queries → Tags. A query tag has a Name, a Color and an optional Group.A tag or group name must not start or end with a quote or an apostrophe. Quotes inside the name are
fine.
Tag groups
Tags can be filed into groups, so you can read a dashboard by category instead of one tag at a time. Manage them in the Tag Groups card at the bottom of the same page: New group takes a Name and a Color.- On the tags table, the Group column shows where each tag sits, and Move to group files a selection in one action. Pick No group (ungroup) to take them back out.
- Deleting a group keeps its tags. They simply become ungrouped.
- In the filter bar, each group is a heading you can select on its own: picking it filters by the union of its member tags. Expand the heading to pick individual tags, or use the Ungrouped bucket.
- On the Overview, the Tags Summary card collapses each group into a single row.
Using tags
- Overview — the Tags Summary card shows mention rate and average position per tag, rolled up by group.
- Tags page — a full comparison table (Results, Mention rate, SoV, Avg. position, Sentiment) plus a Mention rate by tag trend chart. Click any row for a detail sheet with entity ranking and top sources for that tag.
- Platforms page — the Tags performance heatmap breaks each tag down by model.
- Filters — narrow any analysis page to specific tags.
AND / OR mode
When you select one or more tags, or a tag group, in the filter bar, a mode toggle appears:- OR — responses matching any selected tag
- AND — responses matching all selected tags (the default)
Response tags
Query tags label the questions. Response tags label the answers — useful for patterns you only recognise once you read the response (“recommends us”, “competitor only”, “mentions pricing”). Manage the definitions at Project settings → Response Tagging → Tags, and apply them to individual responses at Project settings → Response Tagging → All responses.Matching mode
Unlike query tags, a response tag has a Matching mode:- Exact (default): the answer contains the tag name, word for word. Case and punctuation do not matter.
- Semantic: the answer is about the topic. An AI reads each answer and decides from the tag’s name, its Description and what it Does not cover.
Semantic tags
Use a semantic tag for a topic that answers can word in many ways, such as “mentions pricing” or “recommends a competitor”. The tag name alone does not decide: an answer can contain the name and still not match. A semantic tag has two extra fields:
Leave a field empty and click Auto-fill: it drafts the empty fields from the tag name and your
other tags. Read the draft before you save.
A project can have up to 75 semantic tags. Exact tags have no limit.
New and past answers
New answers are tagged as they arrive. Creating a semantic tag, editing its card or switching a tag to semantic does not change past answers. The Tags page then shows which tags changed since past answers were classified. Click Re-sync past answers to apply the changes to them:- You can re-sync once every 7 days per project. The page shows when the next re-sync is available.
- A re-sync covers the answers of the last 180 days, up to the 100,000 most recent. Older answers keep their current matches.
- It replaces the links of the changed tags, including links added or removed by hand.
- It runs in the background and can take a few hours on large projects. You can leave the page.
- If a re-sync stops before it finishes, click Start again. A re-sync that stopped does not use up your weekly re-sync.