Keyword match modes and how to pick keywords
Updated
A keyword rule decides one thing: does this comment (or DM, or story reply) fire the automation? The answer depends on your keywords and a match mode. This page is the precise version, so you can predict what will and won’t trigger before a real fan tests it for you. The short version lives in Build your first automation.
What every mode does first
- Capital letters never matter.
LINK,Linkandlinkare the same. The studio shows keywords in capitals only to be readable. - Full-width and fancy-width letters are flattened. A comment typed as ＬＩＮＫ matches
link. - Accents are kept.
cafedoes not match “café”. If both spellings are likely, add both as keywords. - There is no fuzzy matching. A typo such as “lnk” does not match
link. Dartzo doesn’t guess what someone meant. - Exclude words are checked first. If the text contains any of your exclude keywords, the rule is dropped before keywords are even looked at. See the section on exclude words below.
- No keywords at all means the rule fires on everything. See *Reply to any comment* below.
The four modes, with a real keyword
Say your keyword is LINK. Here is what each mode does with real comments:
| Comment | Contains | Exact | Begins with | All words (LINK + GUIDE) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LINK | Fires | Fires | Fires | No (GUIDE missing) |
| send me the link | Fires | Fires | Fires | No |
| Link!! 🙌 | Fires | Fires | Fires | No |
| links please | Fires | No | Fires | No |
| linkkk | Fires | No | Fires | No |
| unlink | Fires | No | No | No |
| need the link and the guide | Fires | Fires | Fires | Fires |
Contains
The keyword appears anywhere in the text, even inside a longer word. It’s the most forgiving mode and the default. The catch is false positives: BOX also matches “inbox”, HI matches “this” and “which”, and LINK matches “unlink”. Pick keywords that are unlikely to hide inside other words.
Exact
Despite the name, this is whole word, not whole comment. Dartzo splits the text into words (anything that isn’t a letter or a digit is a break) and fires when one of those words is your keyword. “send me the link” fires on LINK; “links” and “linkkk” don’t. Two things to know:
- A keyword made of two words (such as
price list) can never fire in Exact mode, because no single word equals it. Use Contains for phrases. - An emoji keyword can never fire in Exact mode either, because an emoji is not a word.
Begins with
Fires when the whole text starts with the keyword, or when any word in it starts with the keyword. So GUIDE catches “guide me”, “send the guides” and “need a guide”, but not “aguide”. It’s a good middle ground when you want to allow plurals and endings, like ORDER catching “orders” and “ordering”, without matching words that merely contain it.
All words
Needs every keyword you added to be present, in any order. Each is checked like Contains, so it’s a substring check, not a whole-word one. With PRICE and KITNA, the comment “price kitna hai?” fires and “price?” doesn’t. Use it sparingly: one misspelt word and the whole rule stays silent.
With several keywords
In Contains, Exact and Begins with, any one keyword is enough. The first keyword in your list that matches is recorded as the keyword that fired, which is the keyword recorded against that person, for example when leads are tagged. Add your most specific word first. The studio holds up to 20 keywords per automation.
Emojis, misspellings and Hinglish
| Situation | What happens | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| An emoji keyword such as 🔥 | Works in Contains. In Exact it never fires. In Begins with it fires only if the comment starts with it. | Use Contains for emoji. Better, pair it with a word, since people often type both. |
| A comment that has an emoji next to the word (“link🔥”) | Contains and Exact both fire, because the emoji counts as a word break. | Nothing, it works. |
| Spelling mistakes (“lnk”, “linc”) | No match. There’s no fuzzy matching. | Add the common misspellings as extra keywords, or accept that rare typos won’t fire. |
| Hinglish in Roman letters (“link bhejo”, “price kitna”) | Works like any English word. Spelling varies a lot, though: bhejo, bhej do, bhejna. | Add the two or three spellings your followers really use. |
| Hindi in Devanagari (“लिंक भेजो”) | Contains works. Exact doesn’t, because the vowel signs in Devanagari are treated as breaks between words. | Use Contains for Devanagari keywords. |
| Punctuation inside the word (“l.i.n.k”) | No match. | Nothing; that is rare. |
Exclude keywords
Switch on Exclude keywords (“Never fire on some words”) and add words that should stop this rule. It’s in Advanced, or under *Settings* in the calm view. It is a plain contains check on every mode, and it wins over your keywords. That makes it powerful and a little dangerous: an exclude of no also blocks “know” and “enjoy”. Use whole, distinctive words such as free or cancel.
A real use: a coaching class has a rule on FEES, but doesn’t want to answer people who comment “fees refund” (a different conversation). The exclude word is refund, so those comments are left for a human.
Reply to any comment (no keywords)
Switch on Reply to any comment (for story replies it reads Reply to every story reply, for DMs Reply to any message) and the keyword box disappears. The rule fires on everything that isn’t excluded. On a post it’s a catch-all: if another rule on the same post also matches, the more specific one wins and the catch-all only gets what’s left. See Which automation wins.
Picking keywords that work
- Make it one distinctive word
LINK,GUIDE,PRICE,MENU. People comment what you tell them to comment, so say the word out loud in the caption or video. - Avoid short words that hide in others
HI,NO,BOX,ARTare all inside everyday words. If you must use a short word, create it in Exact mode through the phone app, or add an exclude word. - Add the spellings people really typeIf your audience writes “price”, “prize” and “rate”, list the ones you’ve seen in your own comments.
- Test it with a real commentComment on your own post from a second account (comments from your own account never trigger anything) and check that the DM arrives.