To filter Reddit keyword alerts down to real buyers, run every hit through four checks: is the person in your market, are they asking for something rather than just using the word, does the room let you answer and say what you make, and has someone already recommended you. A founder who pipes keyword alerts into Slack counted about one useful hit in seven in October 2026; those four checks are what separate the one from the six.
A keyword match says nothing about where the person is, so the first filter is geography. A UK service gets nothing from a stolen bike in Seattle, however perfectly the words match. City and country subreddits answer this for free, and so do the words people use: postcodes, currencies, local brands and place names.
Add the obvious wrong markets as never words in your alert tool where it supports excluding words, and treat a hit from a general subreddit as unknown until the post says where the person is. Unknown is worth a glance; clearly elsewhere is not.
The hits worth your time are people asking: which one should I buy, is there an app that, any recommendations, what do you use for. Most keyword hits are mentions instead: news, a story, a complaint with no question in it, or another vendor talking about their own product.
Write your keywords as the phrases a buyer types, not the name of your category. "Bike tracker" alone catches every review and every news story; "which bike tracker" and "stolen bike with a tracker" catch the people who need one. Pair category words with ask words and the feed shrinks fast.
A thread you are not allowed to answer is not a lead. Many large recommendation subreddits ban founders naming their own product outright, and some remove any comment with a link automatically, even a link to a free tool. Read the sidebar rules once per room and keep a short list of the rooms where you can say what you make.
In rooms that ban it, you can still answer usefully without naming yourself, which builds the account but will not bring a customer this week. Sort your alerts so the rooms where you can name yourself come first.
In an active subreddit the right small product is often recommended by a reader within a day. If a reply already names you, adding your own comment rarely helps and can read as piling on. Open the thread, search the replies for your name, and spend the time on threads where nobody has named you yet.
That last check is also the cheapest signal you have that the earlier ones worked: if strangers keep recommending you in the threads your filter keeps, the filter is finding the right people.
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Because a keyword match only proves the word appeared. It does not check the person's country, whether they asked for anything, whether the room allows you to answer, or whether you are already recommended. One founder running keyword alerts into Slack in October 2026 counted about one useful hit in seven.
Use ask phrases as keywords instead of bare category words, for example which, any recommendations, is there an app, alternative to, plus your category. Exclude the words that mark the wrong market or the wrong kind of post, and read each room's rules once so you know where you can name yourself.
Most free keyword alerters match words, not places, so the country filter is yours to add: exclude other markets' place names and currencies, and favour your own city and country subreddits. Kasspian reads hits for market, ask and room rule before they reach you, which is the part keyword alerts leave to you.
Skip the guesswork. Kasspian finds the people already asking for what you sell, writes the replies, and shows which ones turned into revenue, with the sources behind every call.
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