The document below includes a detailed discussion of concepts for creating effective keyword searches using our basic keyword search form. The ideas presented here will help give you tips for the best way to create a search that will achieve your monitoring goals!
Precision and Recall
Before filling in the fields of the basic keyword search form, it will be beneficial to review two key concepts from the field of information retrieval: precision and recall.
Precision refers to the percentage of results that are relevant. Higher precision means fewer irrelevant clips. The narrower your search terms, the higher the likelihood that you’ll collect only relevant mentions.
Recall refers to the percentage of relevant clips that were successfully retrieved. Better recall means fewer missed clips. The broader your search terms, the higher the likelihood that you’ll collect every relevant mention.
Crafting a good search requires finding the right balance between precision and recall. You want a search that is specific enough to return relevant information, but not so narrow that you are inadvertently missing content. The right balance depends on you, your business needs, and your workflow.
Brainstorming
Before drafting your search, take a moment to consider the following questions. They will help you determine what search parameters to include and to judge the effectiveness of your search.
What do I plan to do with the information I retrieve?
Examples: Track coverage of a new initiative, analyse the reaction to a new product, keep tabs on my competitors
What kinds of information am I looking for?
Examples: Blog posts, newspaper articles, press releases
In what kinds of sources would this information be published?
Examples: Social vs. traditional media, local vs. international coverage
Keep in mind that the answers to these questions differ for each search. If you are only interested in keeping up with major news stories about your partner organizations, a search you craft to retrieve that information should be narrower in scope than one seeking to track any mention of yourorganization.
Your answers to these questions may change as you build your search. Creating searches is an iterative process. As you test out different search parameters, the results you see should help you refine your approach. To optimize your search further, consider testing terms iteratively and regularly monitoring results to identify patterns. These strategies can help fine-tune your search for optimal performance.When testing terms, include alternative spellings or variations to address potential transcription errors, especially in broadcast content.
Crafting a Search
Start by listing all the relevant terms that could come up in relation to your search.
What terms will always be present in a relevant result?
Examples: The name of your organization or the specific product you are monitoring for
What terms will sometimes be present in a relevant result?
Examples: Relevant industry terms, products, or initiatives
Are there any additional parameters?
Examples: Language restrictions or limitations on sources of interest
Contains ALL of the following keywords
The terms that will always be present in your results are your core search terms.
You are telling the system that if an article does not contain these terms, it is automatically not relevant.
Enter core search terms in the box labeled “Contains ALL of the following keywords.”
Contains ONE or MORE of the following keywords
This second question helps you brainstorm relevant qualifiers for your search.
The presence of qualifier terms helps ensure that the mentions of your core search terms are relevant to your specific needs.
One or more of your qualifier terms needs to be present in a clip for that clip to be retrieved.
Enter qualifier terms in the box labeled “Contains ONE OR MORE of the following keywords.”
Search Example:
Imagine I want to monitor for mentions of the Cision Communications Cloud.
I believe that relevant articles will always contain the keyword "Cision", so I enter that into the
Contains ALL the following keywords field.
Since I want to capture coverage for products, I include different ways that products could be mentioned in print, online and/or closed captioning, so I include: "PR", "products", OR "communications" in the Contains ONE OR MORE of the following keywords field.
I can also select which types of media I would like to monitor, such as Print, Online and Broadcast.
Use the Preview Sample Results button to examine what kinds of results the first iteration of your search would return.
Examining Results
When you preview a new search, you will see a sample set of results found over a30 day period. This will only reflect sources that you specified in your search. These results should approximate what you would see in Cision on a monthly basis, so examine them carefully.
For this information to be useful, it should be actionable. Think back to the brainstorming we did and ask yourself if the clips you’ve pulled will enable you to do what you set out to do. If so, great! Go ahead, save your search, and watch the clips flow in.
In most cases, you will need to go back and refine your approach to increase the precision of your results. Take note of patterns you see in the results. (You may need to do some additional investigation to see the patterns. Try searching for the sample clip in Search All News in order to learn more about it.)
What do the relevant results have in common?
Examples: Are they all from similar outlets? Do they all mention a specific product?
What do the irrelevant results have in common ?
Examples: Are there any reoccurring terms or concepts? Is the coverage about another organization with a similar name? Are there any relevant concepts that are missing from irrelevant results?
Back to my Search example: My search for Cision Communications Cloud media clips above retrieves 18,300 results in the past month. For my purposes, that is far too many articles, and they don't all specifically mention the Cision Communications Cloud. These results are not relevant to my goals for this search. I know I need to go back and restrict my search parameters to tailor the results to my needs.
Refining Your Search
Once you have a sense of what kinds of results your search picks up, and what patterns are reoccurring, you can use that knowledge to improve the second iteration of your search.
There are three principle ways to refine a search: Qualifiers, Exclusions, and Filters. A fourth strategy, Alternative Spellings, can be particularly useful for addressing transcription errors or variations in broadcast content.
Qualifiers
Remember, qualifiers are terms that “qualify” your search and provide more information about the context in which your key search terms are relevant. Enter qualifiers in the box labeled “Contains ONE OR MORE following keywords.”
If your results are too broad and you don’t have any qualifiers, add some.
When you examined relevant articles, consider this: What specifically made them relevant? Some examples of qualifiers include:
Names of key individuals connected to your organization
Common misspellings of important terms or names to ensure broader recall- Alternative spellings of names or terms to address transcription errors in broadcast clips
Distinctive phrases from broadcast content to improve alignment and search accuracy
Specific products or initiatives
Individuals connected to your organization
Industry terms to differentiate your company from another with a similar name- Variations of names or terms to account for potential misspellings in closed captions
Boolean logic combinations to include multiple variations of key terms
Remember, not every qualifier has to be present in an article for it to be retrieved. A clip will be retrieved when one or more of your qualifier terms are found.
If you’ve already added qualifiers, consider narrowing them further. Remove overly broad qualifiers and replace them with something more specific to your information need.
Back to my Search example: If you recall, I started my search with "Cision" as my core search term and the product-related qualifiers "PR", "products", and "communications". Upon closer inspection, I realized that the articles most relevant to me are the ones that specifically mention "communications cloud". I’ve replaced those broad qualifiers with some more specific ones: "Communications Cloud", "Comms Cloud", and "Communication Cloud".
Simply by adding more specific qualifiers, I’ve reduced my monthly results to a much more manageable (and relevant) 179 articles.
Exclusions
Another way to refine your search is to add exclusions. Enter these terms in the box labeled “Contains NONE of the following keywords.”
Exclusions act as advertised: they exclude any articles containing those terms. When an exclusion term is present, that takes precedence over everything else. Even if all of your core search terms and qualifiers are found in a clip, if it contains any one of your exclusion terms it will not be retrieved. Exclusion keywords are applied in a strict manner, meaning any article containing an excluded term will not be displayed in your Mention Stream. This strict filtering can help maintain relevance but can also result in the unintended removal of important articles.
If used haphazardly, exclusion terms can inadvertently block relevant content from making it into your system. However, they can also be a powerful tool for ensuring the relevance of your search.
Some scenarios in which you may want to use exclusion terms include:
Blocking specific kinds of online coverage, such as market analysis reports, by excluding terms and phrases common to those reports
Blocking commercials for your products by using tagline phrases as exclusion terms Removing mentions of an unrelated company with a similar name by excluding terms specific to their industry
Back to my Search example: While I have a far reduced number of article results, I notice that many of them contain "Press Release" in the title. I can add an exclusion, such as "press release", which will exclude those results. And we see that I've reduced my results to 123 mentions by adding this exclusion.
Filters
Finally, you can refine your search results by using filters. In Cision Comms Cloud, you can filter by
language, country of origin, and type of source.
Language and country of origin reflect the publication. Source refers to the broader category of content to which these publications belong. For example, do you want to see Print/Online, Broadcast, and Social content for this search or just a subset of those categories?
Remember, if you are searching for Social Media content, these terms need to be optimized before they start to deliver results. Reach out to our Support Team to have these optimized.
Back to my Example: I am happy with most of my search results in the preview, but notice that some clips are in languages that I don't want to capture for this particular search. I can add a filter for Language: "English", which reduces my search results to only those in English.
Now that I have excluded articles that are in languages other than English and am satisfied with my results in the preview, I am ready to Save my Search!
Finding the Right Balance
The strategies above should help you refine your search to ensure that you’re getting relevant results.
No information retrieval system is perfect and no search will collect 100% relevant results without occasionally missing something, or capture every single clip without the occasional irrelevant result. However, you can certainly build a search that is effective and relevant to your specific business needs.
It might take several iterations of your search to accomplish. Sometimes, you restrict your results too much and must go back and add broader qualifiers or remove some exclusion terms. When you’re testing searches, it’s a good idea to change one variable at a time. Test your qualifiers before adding exclusions, for example. That way, you’ll know the specific impact of each change. When refining exclusion keywords, be sure to start with specific terms and test their impact on your results. Regularly review and iterate on these terms to avoid unintentional filtering of relevant content. This iterative optimization ensures your search maintains both relevance and comprehensiveness.When testing different variables, consider including alternative spellings or transcription variations to ensure comprehensive results, particularly for broadcast content.
With each iteration, you should learn more about your coverage and what makes it relevant.
Need More Help?
Some searches are simple. Others present significant technical challenges. Sometimes, you need complex Boolean logic to really drill down to the most relevant coverage. In these cases, you’re not on your own. Cision’s expert support team Customer Service Management is here to assist you!
For example, consider a scenario in which there are two different versions of your core search terms (such as alternate forms of your organization’s name). Only one of these terms needs to be present in an article, but you do want to pair every version with the same sets of qualifiers and exclusions. In this case, you can create two separate searches – one for each core search term – or you can work with Support to craft a nested Boolean search tailored to your needs!