spot: Spot entity mentions in text

API: dbpedia-spotlight.org:dbpedia-spotlight-api
Endpoint: /spot
Response format: application/json
Auth: unknown
Method: GET
Last Status: 200
Latency: 165ms

Description

Returns surface forms (mentions) found in the text with their positions. Use this when you only need to identify where entities might be mentioned without linking them to specific DBpedia resources.

From spec: A 1-step process: Spotting only. Identifies surface forms (mentions) in text without candidate mapping or disambiguation.

Usage Tips

- The fastest endpoint - only performs spotting without disambiguation - Returns @name (surface form) and @offset (character position in text) - Use when performance is critical and you don't need entity URIs - Good for pre-processing text to identify potential entity locations

Parameters (7)

confidence (number, query, optional)

Confidence score threshold for disambiguation/linking (0.0-1.0)

Constraints: {'minimum': 0, 'maximum': 1}

policy (string, query, optional)

Filtering policy: 'whitelist' selects entities matching types, 'blacklist' excludes them

Constraints: {'enum': ['whitelist', 'blacklist']}

sparql (string, query, optional)

SPARQL SELECT query to whitelist results

support (integer, query, optional)

Minimum prominence of entity in Lucene Model (number of inlinks in Wikipedia)

text (string, query, required)

Text to be annotated

types (string, query, optional)

Comma-separated DBpedia types filter (e.g., DBpedia:Place,DBpedia:Person)

url (string, query, optional)

URL to be annotated (alternative to text)

Examples (1)

Spot entity mentions in text about London probe-gate

Demonstrates the fastest endpoint that only spots surface forms without disambiguation or linking.

curl 'https://api.dbpedia-spotlight.org/en/spot?text=London+is+a+major+city+in+Europe&confidence=0.5'
import requests

resp = requests.get(
    "https://api.dbpedia-spotlight.org/en/spot",
    params={
        'text': 'London is a major city in Europe',
        'confidence': '0.5',
    },
)
data = resp.json()
import zingu_apis

api = zingu_apis.api("dbpedia-spotlight")
result = api.fetch("spot", text="London is a major city in Europe", confidence=0.5)

for item in result:
    print(item)
const resp = await fetch("https://api.dbpedia-spotlight.org/en/spot?text=London+is+a+major+city+in+Europe&confidence=0.5");
const data = await resp.json();

Probe History

Latency

Status Codes

TimeStatusLatencySize
2026-04-16 04:16:45.035936 200 165ms
2026-04-15 02:16:27.430962 200 168ms
2026-04-14 00:06:09.276689 200 712ms
2026-04-12 16:24:01.289624 200 267ms
2026-04-10 02:52:51.460163 200 96ms