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Google Sheets template: hourly news mentions of your brand

By Keencrest · 2026-11-01

Data: The GDELT Project. GDELT permits commercial use and redistribution with a citation and a link, and every row the Actor returns carries that citation. The Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by GDELT.

Download: sheets-gdelt-mentions.gs. Related guide: Get a Slack alert when your brand is in the news.

Set up

  1. In a Google Sheet: Extensions, Apps Script, paste the file.
  2. Project Settings, Script properties: add APIFY_TOKEN with your own Apify API token. Never paste a token into a cell.
  3. Edit KEYWORDS, EXCLUDE and LANGUAGES at the top, save, reload the sheet.
  4. Keencrest menu, Start hourly alert. Google asks you to authorise the script once; it then creates an hourly trigger and runs a first check. Stop alert removes the trigger.

What it writes

A Mentions tab with the columns seen_at, published_at, title, url, source_domain, language, tone, matched and source (the GDELT citation). Each run appends only articles the Actor has not returned before (watch mode), so the tab is a log you can sort by tone or filter by domain.

Cost and limits

$0.002 per article returned; no new articles means no rows and no charge. Each run sends maxTotalChargeUsd=1 and maxItems 100. Apps Script allows a limited number of trigger runs and 6 minutes per run on a free account, which a watch-mode check does not approach. published_at is often empty because it is filled only when the page declares a time; seen_at is always present.

What was tested

The script was run in Node against mocked Apps Script services and a sample response: it sent the right request, created the tab, wrote the header once and a nine-column row. It was not run inside Google Sheets in this build. The Actor's watch mode was tested on the Apify platform.

Try it: GDELT News Monitor on Apify. $0.002 per article returned, no start fee; reading files and filtering is free. The Apify free plan includes monthly credit, so a test run costs nothing out of pocket.

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