Cairn PR evidence software

01 PR evidence software

One story.
Counted once.

Cairn finds your coverage, tells the original from its syndication, and turns the result into a report your client can check line by line.

Local first. Your coverage stays in your workspace.

The mark beside every number

Four grades. The height is the evidence.

Every figure Cairn produces carries how it was obtained. The mark sits next to the number, in the report, and here. A derived figure may take counted inputs and nothing else, which is why the hollow pile can only rest on the solid one.

Counted

Observed one by one. The tallest pile, and the only one another figure may rest on.

Derived

Not observed, computed. Hollow, because it is only as solid as the counted figures underneath it.

Estimated

It stands, less certainly. Labelled everywhere it appears, and never quietly promoted.

Declared

One stone, placed by a person who signed for it. A judgement, and it says so.

02 The problem

A monitoring feed is not a coverage number.

Every tool returns a list. The list is longer than the truth, and the difference is what your client will find.

Numbers get inflated

A wire piece is picked up by nine sites. Counting ten is wrong. Counting one is also wrong. Both are indefensible in a review, and neither can be shown to be right.

Reports get challenged

Directories, review sites, the client's own blog and a dictionary definition all match on a brand name. When a client spots one, the whole report is in question.

Time gets wasted

The answer to "why did this count?" is a screenshot and a memory. An afternoon goes into reconstructing a decision nobody wrote down.

03 How Cairn works

Monitor, review, validate, prove.

Four stages. Each one answers a question the next depends on, and each leaves a record.

01

Monitor

Cairn collects mentions of your brand and the competitors you are measured against, keeping the evidence for each.

02

Review

When Cairn does not recognise a publication it asks you what it is, rather than quietly counting or dropping it.

03

Validate

Your decision is stored against your name and the time. Changing your mind writes a new decision. Nothing is erased.

04

Prove

The report states its period, its method and its figures, and every article traces back to why it counted.

04 See it work

This is the screen, not a rendering of it.

A Cairn project overview. A banner states that how much of
                the available coverage this collection read was not
                recorded. Below it, seven articles are not counted yet: two
                publications Cairn does not recognise, and five where it
                needs a person to say whether the story is really about the
                brand. The figures underneath read twenty-four new
                pieces of coverage, six counted, one related pickup and
                seven needing review.
A real screen, not a rendering. Twenty four pieces of coverage arrived. Six are counted. One is a pickup of a story already counted, and seven are not counted at all: two from publications Cairn does not recognise, five where it will not decide on its own whether the story is really about the brand.

Two amber lines say the same uncomfortable thing twice, in the banner and again in the summary: how much of the available coverage this collection read was not recorded. A tool that wanted to look good would have dropped that sentence. It is the one your client will ask about. demo.cairnpr.com · 17 September 2026

Four results. One story.

What Cairn does not do

It does not delete the three pickups. Syndication is real coverage, and a tool that silently removes it understates your reach.

What it does instead

It records which piece ran first, marks the other three as pickups of it, and names the publication each reproduces. You can report four pieces and one story, and defend both numbers.

Coverage Revolut, 22 to 29 Aug
  • Revolut begins rolling out euro stablecoin EURR Original
    Counted
  • Revolut begins rolling out euro stablecoin EURR Syndicated pickup, reproduces CoinDesk
    Counted
  • Revolut launches euro stablecoin, starting in Denmark Syndicated pickup, reproduces CoinDesk
    Counted
  • Revolut joins global stablecoin race with euro token Syndicated pickup, reproduces CoinDesk
    Counted

Article evidence
Publication
coindesk.com
Published
26 Aug 2026
Origin
Original. 3 syndicated pickups.
Counted
Yes. Independent media, about this brand.
Client report
Revolut57.1%
bunq42.9%
N260.0%

Seven counted pieces. Every one traceable to the decision that counted it.

One week, in full, refusals included.

Twenty four mentions collected for four brands between 22 and 28 August 2026. This is the whole week, not the good half. No competitor shows you what it threw away.

Ruled editorial

12

  • Bloombergrule: allowlisted editorial domain
  • The Guardianrule: allowlisted editorial domain
  • CoinDeskhuman decision, recorded
  • NL Timeshuman decision, recorded
  • Retail Banker Internationalhuman decision, recorded
  • Yahoo Financehuman decision, recorded
  • Trade Finance Global, Netzwelt, Post Radar, AI Journ, Metal.comhuman decisions, recorded

Ruled out, and why

9

  • Wikipediareference work
  • Google Playapp store listing
  • Trustpilotuser generated platform
  • Merriam-Websterowned or non editorial
  • A vendor blogowned or non editorial
  • A broker directorydirectory, not editorial

Still undecided

3

  • Three publications Cairn will not classify on its own, and does not guess about.waiting on a person

Six of the nine exclusions come from a rule, three from a person whose decision is stored with their name and the date. That is the difference between a number you present and a number you can defend: not that it is higher, but that every piece behind it can be taken apart in front of the client who is paying for it.

05 The method

Every number can be taken apart.

These are the rules Cairn actually applies. They are deterministic: the same coverage produces the same answer next month, and a result you disagree with can be argued line by line.

The same page is the same page

URLs are normalised before comparison: lowercased scheme and host, tracking parameters stripped, fragment dropped, trailing slash removed.

One signal never merges two stories

A suppressing decision needs at least two corroborating signals. A headline with fewer than four content words cannot drive it.

The original is the earliest evidenced

The piece with the earlier publication date is the original. A missing date sorts last, so an unknown date cannot win by accident.

A date carries its own evidence

Every publication date is stored with where it came from and how precise it is. Cairn never invents one.

Time windows are part of the rule

Two URLs for one story on one site appear within hours. Pickup is allowed seven days. Beyond that, two pieces stay two pieces.

A refusal is not a zero

An unevaluated period says so rather than printing a percentage. Reporting it as 0% would be a false statement.

Human decisions are append only

Every validation carries who made it and when. Undo is a new decision restoring the previous state. The earlier one stays.

The rules are versioned

Each stored judgement carries the ruleset version that produced it, so an older decision can be found and looked at again.

06 What Cairn does not do

The shortest list is the honest one.

Open any competing home page and the first figures you meet are estimated views, domain authority and audience reach. Not one of them survives a client asking how it was obtained. Cairn does not publish them. These are not features waiting to be built, they are decisions, and they are why this list is short.

  • No guessing. If Cairn cannot recognise a publication it asks you. It does not assume, and it does not quietly exclude.
  • No invented dates. An article with no stated date is left unknown, never given the day it was found.
  • No score for a relationship. Duplicate judgements come from stated rules, not a similarity model you cannot argue with.
  • No silent deletion. Excluded coverage stays visible with the reason printed next to it.
  • No contact database. No journalist emails, phone numbers or personal profiles.
  • No reach, no impressions. Neither can be proven. A figure you cannot defend in front of the client paying for it is not worth printing next to your name.
  • No advertising value equivalent. The Barcelona Principles proscribe it and the profession followed. The home pages did not.
  • No social listening, no paid media. Cairn measures earned editorial coverage and nothing else. A tool that measures everything measures nothing precisely.
  • No overall score per piece. A score that folds ten judgements into one number hides all ten, and the one it hides best is the weakest.

07 Who it is for

Built for the person who has to defend the number.

A good fit

  • Small and mid sized PR agencies reporting to clients monthly
  • Independent consultants who own the numbers they present
  • In house teams measured against named competitors
  • Anyone who has been asked why a piece was counted

Not a fit

  • Teams who need broadcast and print clipping
  • Global monitoring across dozens of markets
  • Anyone who wants a media contact database
  • Anyone who wants the highest number rather than the right one
During the beta

Free for testers until 28 February 2027. The product is not a production service during that period, and we say so rather than discovering it together.

Where your data sits

Cairn runs against a workspace you control. One workspace is one agency, and a separate workspace keeps another agency's coverage entirely apart.

08 Pricing

Published, because hiding it tells you something.

Per month, excluding tax, no minimum term. The three tools closest to Cairn publish a price. The two largest make you book a call first. We have decided which side of that we are on.

What each tier includes
 Classic StandardPremium
Weekly collection, share of voice, monthly report YesYesYes
Provenance declared on every figure YesYesYes
One to three competitors per brand YesYesYes
Tone analysis NoYesYes
Collection depth, results per brand per pass 40160700
Share of available coverage actually read, stated in the report YesYesYes
Price, by the number of clients you report on
Tier1 to 3 clients Article quota4 to 10 clients Article quota
Classic39 €1 500 / month 89 €4 000 / month
Standard79 €2 500 / month 179 €6 000 / month
Premium149 €5 000 / month 329 €12 000 / month

Prices hold until 31 March 2027. Cairn is in beta until 28 February 2027: during that period it is free for testers, and it is not a production service. We would rather say that here than let you find out.

Setting up

300 € once, on signature. It covers configuring your brands and their competitors, building your list of titles, creating the accounts and the handover. Count half a day.

The article quota

Articles processed per month, across all your clients. It is never exceeded by surprise: collection stops and tells you. You then wait for next month or add a block of 1 000 articles for 15 €.

Billing and commitment

Monthly, in arrears, by transfer. No commitment, cancellable at any time for the end of the current month.

Where your data goes

One database per agency, isolated, full export on request at any time. Article text goes to Anthropic for classification and queries to Brave Search. The contract annexe names both.

09 Design partners

Coverage you can stand behind.

Early access for selected PR agencies and consultants. We are working with a small number of teams who report coverage to clients and want the figures to hold up.

Tell us how many clients you report on and how you count coverage today.

Already testing Cairn? Your agency has its own address, and it is in your welcome message. There is no shared sign in page, because one workspace is one agency and they are kept apart on purpose.

You receive these reports rather than produce them? Write to us. We are not promising a brand side product yet. We would like to know how many of you there are first.