12 Best Content Monitoring Tools for 2025: A Strategic Guide

Manually tracking competitor websites, social media mentions, and pricing changes is an inefficient and unreliable strategy. Critical updates are easily missed, leading to lost opportunities, reputational damage, or falling behind the competition. Automated content monitoring solves this by systematically tracking specific digital assets and alerting you to meaningful changes in real-time. This approach transforms a reactive, time-consuming task into a proactive, strategic advantage.

This comprehensive guide dives into the top platforms designed to automate this process. We will explore a curated list of tools, breaking down their core functionalities, ideal use cases, and practical implementation tips. Whether you need to monitor competitor ad campaigns, track pricing adjustments, stay ahead of PR crises, or ensure regulatory compliance, you will find a solution tailored to your specific business needs. To transition from manual efforts to automated solutions, it's essential to explore the various comprehensive tools available, and for additional insights into top picks, consider reviewing the 12 Best Online Reputation Management Software Picks for 2025.

Each platform featured below includes a detailed breakdown, screenshots, and direct links to help you quickly evaluate and select the best fit for your team. We cut through the marketing jargon to provide a clear, actionable resource for founders, CTOs, and SMBs ready to implement a robust content monitoring system.

1. ChampSignal

ChampSignal stands out as a powerful, all-in-one platform engineered for high-signal content monitoring. It consolidates competitor intelligence across multiple channels into a single, actionable feed, eliminating the manual effort and noise common with other tools. Its core strength lies in its ability to filter out low-impact changes, surfacing only the strategic moves that demand a response. This allows teams to shift from hours of hunting for information to minutes of decisive action.

The platform's setup is remarkably fast, enabling users to begin monitoring key competitor assets in under a minute. It provides crucial context for every detected change, including visual screenshots, HTML diffs, and a preserved history. This ensures you not only see what changed but also understand the potential strategic intent behind it.

Key Strengths and Use Cases

• Comprehensive Coverage: Unifies monitoring of websites (pricing, features, messaging), Google Ads, social media and Reddit mentions, backlinks, and keyword rankings. This provides a holistic view of a competitor's go-to-market strategy.
• Intelligent Alerting: Utilizes AI and statistical outlier detection to drastically reduce notification fatigue. Instead of a constant stream of minor updates, you receive curated daily digests or instant Slack/email alerts for significant events, like a major pricing overhaul or a new feature launch.
• Automated Discovery: The platform can automatically identify and suggest new or emerging competitors, ensuring your market awareness remains current without constant manual research.

Implementation and Onboarding

ChampSignal offers a risk-free entry point with a 14-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee, backed by 24/7 human support. Plans are scalable, with options like the "Focused" tier (around $33–$39/month) and the "Competitive" tier (around $83–$99/month), making it accessible for solo founders and larger teams alike. While standard plans have competitor limits, custom solutions are available for enterprise-level needs.

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• Pros: High-signal alerts that filter noise; broad, cross-channel monitoring in one dashboard; rapid setup with deep contextual data (screenshots, HTML diffs); risk-free trial and strong support.
• Cons: Standard plan limits may require upgrades for tracking many competitors; initial alert sensitivity may need fine-tuning to perfectly match team workflow.

Website: https://champsignal.com

2. Visualping

Visualping excels at a specific, powerful form of content monitoring: visual change detection. Instead of just tracking text or code, it captures pixel-by-pixel snapshots of a webpage or a specific section, alerting you to any visual differences. This makes it ideal for monitoring competitor pricing tables, product availability, or even subtle user interface changes that other tools might miss. Its "set it and forget it" simplicity allows for rapid deployment without technical overhead.

The platform is highly accessible, offering a free tier for a limited number of checks and paid plans that scale with usage and team features. Business plans add crucial collaboration tools like workspaces, labels, and bulk job setups, enabling teams to manage large-scale monitoring projects efficiently.

Key Use Cases & Implementation

• Competitor Price Tracking: Set the monitoring area directly on a competitor’s pricing grid to receive an email with highlighted changes the moment they adjust their rates.
• Regulatory Compliance: Monitor government or regulatory agency websites for updates to legal text or compliance documentation, ensuring your business stays current.
• Brand & PR: Keep an eye on your company’s "About Us" page on Wikipedia or key industry review sites to be alerted to unauthorized or negative edits.

Visualping integrates seamlessly with common business tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Sheets, making it easy to pipe alerts directly into existing workflows. Its reliability in visual difference detection gives it a unique edge for non-technical users who need a straightforward yet effective content monitoring solution.

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• Website: https://visualping.io/
• Pricing: Offers a free tier; paid plans scale based on check frequency and volume. Business plans are required for team features.
• Best For: Teams needing precise visual change detection for competitor analysis and compliance without requiring deep technical setup.

3. Distill.io

Distill.io provides sophisticated content monitoring that goes beyond simple webpage tracking. Its standout feature is the ability to monitor specific page elements selected via CSS selectors and even track content behind logins or clicks using recorded action macros. This makes it a powerful choice for monitoring dynamic, complex, or authenticated web applications where standard tools fail. It offers a flexible hybrid approach with both cloud and local monitoring options.

The platform has a generous free tier suitable for light, personal use, with paid plans that unlock faster cloud-based check intervals, more monitors, and advanced features like SMS notifications. Its clear usage limits and interval settings for each plan make it easy to choose the right tier without ambiguity. While the macro feature is a significant advantage, it can require a slight learning curve for non-technical users.

Key Use Cases & Implementation

• Feature Availability Tracking: Use macros to log into a SaaS competitor's platform and monitor a specific dashboard element to know when a new feature is rolled out.
• Gated Content Monitoring: Track partner portals or private forums for updates by recording the login sequence, ensuring you never miss critical announcements.
• E-commerce Stock Alerts: Set a monitor on a product’s "Add to Cart" button or stock status text to receive instant notifications when it becomes available for purchase.

Distill.io delivers alerts through a wide range of channels, including email, push notifications via its browser and mobile apps, SMS, and webhooks for custom integrations. This versatility makes it an excellent tool for users who need to monitor dynamic or restricted web content with precision.

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• Website: https://distill.io/
• Pricing: A generous free tier is available; paid plans scale with check frequency, number of monitors, and advanced features like SMS.
• Best For: Users needing to monitor dynamic or password-protected webpages and who can leverage its powerful macro and element-selection features.

4. ChangeTower

ChangeTower offers a robust and flexible approach to content monitoring, combining visual change detection with powerful HTML and keyword tracking. Its versatility extends beyond standard web pages to include monitoring of PDFs and text-based files like .js or .css. This makes it a comprehensive solution for teams needing to track a wide array of digital assets, from competitor product pages to critical internal documentation.

The platform operates on a flexible credits-based model, allowing users to allocate resources toward higher check frequencies or a greater number of monitored URLs. A key differentiator is its archival snapshot feature, which captures and stores historical versions of monitored pages. This creates an invaluable audit trail for compliance, legal, and strategic analysis purposes, complemented by strong team collaboration and sharing features.

Key Use Cases & Implementation

• Audit & Compliance: Monitor changes to legal disclaimers, privacy policies, or terms of service pages. Use the historical snapshots as an evidentiary record of what was published and when.
• Technical SEO: Set up alerts for changes to your robots.txt, sitemap.xml, or critical JavaScript files to catch unauthorized or accidental modifications that could impact site performance.
• Keyword & Brand Monitoring: Track specific keywords (like your brand name or a new product) across competitor sites, news outlets, or partner pages to monitor mentions and sentiment.

ChangeTower's ability to monitor beyond just the visual layer provides deep technical insight, while its user-friendly interface keeps it accessible. It is particularly well-suited for organizations that require documented proof of web content changes over time.

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• Website: https://changetower.com/pricing/
• Pricing: Offers a limited free plan; paid plans use a credits-based system that scales with check frequency and the number of URLs.
• Best For: Businesses requiring a detailed audit trail of web content changes, including monitoring of non-HTML files like PDFs and code.

5. Fluxguard

Fluxguard offers a powerful, developer-friendly approach to content monitoring, specializing in comprehensive website change detection with AI-driven summaries. It excels at crawling complex sites, including those requiring logins or form submissions, and uses a proxy network to monitor content from different geographic regions. This makes it a go-to tool for technical teams needing precise, region-aware tracking for compliance and competitive intelligence.

The platform stands out by using AI to summarize detected changes, which significantly reduces alert noise and helps users quickly understand the importance of an update. While its credit-based pricing model requires some management to avoid overages, it provides granular control for teams that need to perform frequent checks or monitor dynamic, hard-to-reach content.

Key Use Cases & Implementation

• Compliance & Risk Management: Monitor regulatory portals or partner websites behind a login to track policy updates or changes in terms of service, using AI summaries to flag critical modifications.
• Global Price & Product Tracking: Use the proxy network to crawl international versions of competitor sites, ensuring you have accurate, localized data. For more on this, check out this guide on retailer price monitoring.
• SEO & Technical Audits: Set up HTML-level monitoring on your own site or competitor sites to detect changes to meta tags, canonicals, or structured data that could impact search rankings.

Fluxguard’s integration capabilities via webhooks allow alerts to be sent directly into custom development workflows, business intelligence tools, or team communication platforms. Its ability to handle complex user journeys makes it a superior choice for in-depth, technical content monitoring.

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• Website: https://app.fluxguard.com/pricing?utm_source=openai
• Pricing: Based on a credit system that depends on crawl frequency and complexity; multiple paid tiers available.
• Best For: Technical teams and developers needing to monitor login-gated content, perform geo-specific crawls, and receive AI-summarized change alerts.

6. Brandwatch

Brandwatch is an enterprise-level social listening and consumer intelligence platform designed for deep, large-scale content monitoring. Instead of focusing on specific page elements, it scans over 100 million sources across social media, forums, blogs, and news sites to capture brand mentions, sentiment, and emerging trends. Its strength lies in its massive data coverage and sophisticated AI-driven analytics, which categorize conversations and identify key insights automatically, making it a powerhouse for market research and brand reputation management.

The platform is geared towards organizations needing robust governance and mature reporting capabilities. While its premium pricing and steeper learning curve place it beyond many small businesses, its comprehensive suite of tools offers unparalleled depth for those who can leverage it. Its sophisticated dashboards and alerting systems turn raw data into actionable business intelligence for strategic decision-making.

Key Use Cases & Implementation

• Brand Reputation & Crisis Management: Set up real-time alerts for your brand name (and common misspellings) to instantly track spikes in negative sentiment, allowing PR teams to respond to potential crises before they escalate.
• Consumer & Market Research: Monitor industry keywords and competitor mentions to understand consumer pain points, identify product gaps, and track marketing campaign performance across the digital landscape.
• Competitor Intelligence: Use its powerful analytics to benchmark your share of voice against rivals and analyze their customers' conversations. For more insights on this, read about advanced competitive tracking strategies.

Brandwatch integrates with major business intelligence and CRM platforms, enabling teams to feed social data directly into their existing analytics workflows. This makes it an indispensable tool for enterprises that prioritize data-driven brand and market strategy.

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• Website: https://www.brandwatch.com/
• Pricing: Quote-based enterprise pricing; generally considered a premium-tier solution.
• Best For: Large organizations needing comprehensive social listening and consumer intelligence with mature analytics and reporting capabilities.

7. Talkwalker

Talkwalker is an enterprise-grade social listening and analytics platform that excels at large-scale content monitoring across a vast digital landscape. Powered by its proprietary Blue Silk AI, it processes data from over 30 social platforms and 150 million sources, providing deep insights into brand health, competitive intelligence, and audience sentiment. Its strength lies in transforming unstructured data into actionable, real-time analytics for large teams.

The platform is designed for collaboration, offering unlimited user licensing, which eliminates per-seat cost barriers for growing organizations. This model, combined with professional onboarding and dedicated success resources, makes it a powerful choice for businesses that need robust governance and comprehensive training. Its pre-built IQ Apps provide custom dashboards for specific use cases, simplifying complex data analysis. Many consider Talkwalker to be one of the premier market intelligence tools available.

Key Use Cases & Implementation

• Brand Health Monitoring: Track mentions, sentiment, and share of voice across social media, news sites, and forums to gauge public perception in real-time.
• Competitive Benchmarking: Use IQ Apps to create dashboards that directly compare your brand's performance against key competitors on metrics like engagement and reach.
• Crisis Management: Set up real-time alerts for keywords related to potential PR crises, enabling rapid response and mitigation before issues escalate.

Talkwalker's comprehensive data coverage and powerful analytics engine make it a strategic asset for large organizations needing to harness the full spectrum of online conversations for informed decision-making.

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• Website: https://www.talkwalker.com/pricing?utm_source=openai
• Pricing: Custom quote-based pricing tailored to organizational needs.
• Best For: Large enterprises and agencies needing a scalable social listening and content monitoring solution with unlimited users and robust analytics.

8. Meltwater

Meltwater is an enterprise-grade media intelligence platform that consolidates news monitoring, social listening, and consumer insights into a single suite. It excels at providing a holistic view of a brand's presence across digital media, making it a go-to for PR, communications, and marketing departments. Instead of focusing on a single channel, Meltwater’s strength lies in its ability to track brand mentions, sentiment, and key topics across a vast array of sources, from traditional news outlets to social media platforms.

The platform is designed for larger teams that require integrated reporting and scalable features. Its all-in-one approach streamlines workflows by bundling multiple modules like influencer management and social analytics under a unified contract, backed by strong customer service and training options. This comprehensive scope makes it a powerful tool for large-scale content monitoring campaigns.

Key Use Cases & Implementation

• Brand Reputation Management: Create alerts for company and executive names to instantly track media mentions and social conversations, allowing for rapid response to both positive and negative press.
• Integrated Campaign Analysis: Monitor the combined impact of a PR launch and its corresponding social media campaign, using integrated dashboards to measure reach, sentiment, and share of voice.
• Market & Consumer Intelligence: Track industry trends, competitor mentions, and consumer conversations to identify market gaps, product feedback, and emerging narratives.

Meltwater's value is most apparent for organizations looking to replace multiple point solutions with a single, comprehensive platform. While its pricing reflects its enterprise focus, the ability to unify PR and social monitoring provides a level of strategic insight that is difficult to achieve with disparate tools.

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• Website: https://www.meltwater.com/en/pricing?utm_source=openai
• Pricing: Quote-based enterprise plans; pricing can be high and is tailored to specific module needs.
• Best For: Large corporate communications and marketing teams needing a unified solution for media monitoring and social listening.

9. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media management platform that excels at integrating social listening into daily workflows. Its strength lies in combining publishing, engagement, and analytics with powerful content monitoring capabilities, making it a go-to for teams that manage an active brand presence. The platform allows users to track brand mentions, competitor activity, and relevant keywords across major social networks, providing a holistic view of the social conversation.

With a clean user interface and robust reporting, Sprout Social simplifies social listening for businesses of all sizes. Its unified Smart Inbox brings all incoming messages and mentions into one stream, enabling teams to respond quickly and efficiently. The platform's per-seat pricing model is transparent, though costs can scale as teams grow.

Key Use Cases & Implementation

• Brand Health Monitoring: Configure listening queries to track brand mentions, sentiment, and hashtags. Use the Smart Inbox to engage directly with users who are talking about your brand or industry.
• Competitor Analysis: Set up topics to monitor competitors’ social media content, campaigns, and share of voice. Analyze their engagement metrics to identify strategic opportunities or threats.
• Campaign Tracking: Measure the impact of marketing campaigns by tracking specific hashtags and keywords in real-time. Use the analytics suite to generate detailed reports on reach and engagement.

Sprout Social offers a 30-day free trial without a credit card, making it easy to test its full suite of tools. Its blend of operational social media management and deep listening makes it a well-rounded content monitoring solution for marketing and PR teams.

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• Website: https://sproutsocial.com/pricing/
• Pricing: Plans are priced per user, per month. A generous 30-day free trial is available.
• Best For: Marketing and communication teams seeking an all-in-one platform for social media management, engagement, and brand monitoring.

10. Mention

Mention excels at real-time media monitoring and social listening, casting a wide net across the web, news sites, forums, and major social media platforms. It's designed for teams who need immediate awareness of brand conversations, competitor mentions, and industry trends. The platform stands out by combining broad web crawling with dedicated review site monitoring and sentiment analysis, offering a holistic view of a brand’s public perception.

The user interface is built around creating alerts with powerful Boolean queries, allowing for highly specific and relevant content monitoring. This precision helps teams cut through the noise and focus on conversations that matter, from tracking PR campaigns to managing customer feedback.

Key Use Cases & Implementation

• Brand Reputation Management: Create alerts using your brand name, products, and key executives to receive instant notifications of new mentions. Use sentiment analysis to quickly identify and address negative feedback or reviews.
• Competitor Intelligence: Monitor competitor brand names and product launches to gauge public reaction, track their marketing campaigns, and identify their customer pain points by analyzing their mentions.
• Content & PR Strategy: Track industry keywords and topics to discover trending conversations and identify influencers. This helps in creating relevant content and finding opportunities for media outreach.

Mention's strength lies in its ability to deliver real-time alerts directly into workflows via integrations, helping marketing and PR teams react swiftly. Its focus on both social listening and review monitoring makes it a comprehensive tool for managing online reputation.

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• Website: https://mention.com/en/pricing/
• Pricing: Custom pricing for most tiers, requiring contact. Public pricing is available for the higher-tier "Company" plan.
• Best For: Marketing and PR teams needing a comprehensive, real-time solution for brand mention tracking, social listening, and online review management.

11. Brand24

Brand24 provides comprehensive social listening and media monitoring, making it an excellent tool for tracking brand mentions, sentiment, and conversations across the web. It moves beyond simple webpage tracking to monitor social media platforms, news sites, blogs, forums, podcasts, and even TikTok. This makes it a powerful solution for reputation management and understanding public perception, offering a broader view than traditional content monitoring tools.

The platform is particularly well-suited for SMBs and agencies due to its transparent, accessible pricing and quick setup. AI-powered sentiment analysis, topic detection, and influencer identification provide actionable insights from the vast amount of data it collects. With unlimited user access on most plans, teams can collaborate on monitoring projects without incurring extra costs.

Key Use Cases & Implementation

• Brand Reputation Management: Set up a project to track your brand name, products, and key executives. Receive real-time alerts for new mentions to quickly address negative feedback or engage with positive comments.
• Competitor Social Strategy: Monitor competitors’ brand names and campaign hashtags to analyze their social media performance, customer sentiment, and share of voice within the industry.
• Content & Campaign Analysis: Track specific hashtags related to a marketing campaign to measure its reach, engagement, and overall public sentiment, allowing for real-time adjustments.

Brand24 integrates with Slack for instant team notifications and offers an API as a paid add-on for custom workflows. Its focus on social and media listening provides a crucial layer of qualitative content monitoring that many technical tools lack.

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• Website: https://brand24.com/
• Pricing: Offers tiered plans based on keyword volume and mentions; most tiers include unlimited users.
• Best For: Marketing and PR teams focused on brand reputation, competitor social analysis, and campaign tracking across a wide range of media sources.

12. WebPurify

WebPurify specializes in content safety and moderation, offering a crucial layer of content monitoring for user-generated content (UGC). It provides a hybrid solution combining AI-powered profanity filtering for text with 24/7 live human moderation for images and video. This approach makes it ideal for social networks, marketplaces, and online communities that must maintain brand safety and prevent harmful content from appearing on their platforms. The service is built around APIs, allowing for deep integration into existing applications and safety workflows.

The platform stands out with its transparent, per-unit pricing and a commitment to using trained, in-house moderators rather than crowdsourced teams. This ensures higher accuracy and consistency in moderation decisions. Businesses can start with a free trial and scale their usage, with options for on-premises deployment for enhanced security and control.

Key Use Cases & Implementation

• User-Generated Content (UGC) Moderation: Integrate the profanity filter API to automatically scan and redact inappropriate language from user comments, profiles, and messages in real-time.
• Marketplace & Ad Safety: Use AI and human image moderation to vet product listings, ad creatives, and user-submitted photos to ensure they comply with community guidelines.
• Community Health: Deploy video moderation to review user-uploaded videos for violent, adult, or otherwise harmful content, protecting users and maintaining a safe environment.

WebPurify’s API-first approach requires some initial developer effort for implementation but offers powerful, automated content monitoring that scales with user activity. It is a foundational tool for any platform where user contributions are a core feature.

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• Website: https://www.webpurify.com/
• Pricing: Offers free trials; paid plans are based on per-unit pricing for API calls, images, and video minutes.
• Best For: Platforms with high volumes of user-generated content needing a reliable, scalable moderation solution that combines AI speed with human accuracy.

Top 12 Content Monitoring Tools Comparison

Turning Situational Awareness into a Competitive Edge

Throughout this guide, we've explored the multifaceted world of content monitoring, moving beyond simple brand mentions to a strategic framework for gaining a competitive advantage. The tools we’ve detailed, from visual webpage trackers like Visualping and Fluxguard to comprehensive social listening platforms such as Brandwatch and Talkwalker, all serve a unified purpose: to transform raw information into actionable intelligence. The core takeaway is that in today's dynamic digital landscape, what you don't know can absolutely hurt you. Proactive awareness is no longer a luxury for large enterprises; it's a fundamental necessity for survival and growth.

Effective content monitoring is about building a nervous system for your business, one that senses changes in your environment and triggers an immediate, intelligent response. Whether it's a competitor quietly adjusting their pricing, a new backlink that could boost your SEO, or a shift in customer sentiment on Reddit, these signals are the precursors to market opportunities and threats. By systematically tracking these digital footprints, you move from a reactive posture to a proactive one.

From Data Points to Strategic Decisions

The true value of these tools is unlocked when you connect the alerts to your internal workflows. An alert is just data; its power comes from the action it inspires. A price change alert should trigger a pricing strategy review. A negative review cluster should activate a customer support protocol. A competitor's new feature launch should initiate a product roadmap discussion. This requires a cultural shift where teams are empowered to act on the insights generated.

Furthermore, the data gathered through content monitoring can enrich other strategic initiatives. For example, understanding B2B intent data, often revealed through digital breadcrumbs like competitor website visits or content downloads, is crucial for proactive engagement. The signals you monitor can provide early indicators of a prospect's buying journey or a customer's churn risk, allowing your sales and success teams to intervene at the perfect moment.

Choosing Your Toolkit and Path Forward

Selecting the right tool depends entirely on your specific objectives, budget, and technical resources.

• For tactical, specific changes: Tools like ChampSignal, Distill.io, and ChangeTower offer precise, cost-effective solutions for tracking website elements, pricing, and features. They are ideal for focused competitive intelligence and operational monitoring.
• For broad brand and market listening: Platforms like Brandwatch, Talkwalker, and Meltwater provide an expansive view of your brand's presence across the web, making them essential for PR, brand health, and market research.
• For integrated social media management: Solutions like Sprout Social and Mention combine monitoring with engagement, publishing, and analytics, creating a unified workflow for social media teams.

Your journey into advanced content monitoring should begin with a clear question: "What information, if known immediately, would significantly impact my business?" Start by identifying your most critical blind spots, whether it's competitor product updates, regulatory changes, or key partner announcements. Choose a tool that directly addresses that primary need, configure your alerts thoughtfully to minimize noise, and establish a clear process for acting on the insights you receive. By starting small and demonstrating value, you can build a comprehensive monitoring strategy that keeps your organization agile, informed, and consistently one step ahead.

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Ready to turn competitor intelligence into your unfair advantage? ChampSignal is designed for businesses that need precise, reliable alerts on website changes without the noise. Start monitoring your competitors’ pricing, features, and messaging in minutes. Get your first alert with ChampSignal today.