ADVANCED SEARCH OPTIONS
The News Monitor advanced search options provide additional tuning of search results.
Max Results: This option allows you to determine the number of results you want returned from the search. Smaller numbers will return faster results. The default is 100.
Relevancy Threshold: This option allows you to control how relevant the documents returned are to the entire search criteria string. Higher numbers will return fewer, more relevant results. If you are getting results that are less relevant than you prefer, increase this number. The default is 1.
Source Name: This option allows you to limit the search to the document sources listed in this field. The source is identified by name and each source must be separated by a comma. The default is to search all sources. Please contact HT for a complete list of sources available.
Categories: This option allows you to limit the search to specific categories of data. You may select one or more categories. The default is all categories.
HOW TO SEARCH
TERMS
A query is broken up into terms and operators. There are two types of terms: Single Terms and Phrases.
A Single Term is a single word such as "US" or "President".
A Phrase is a group of words surrounded by double quotes such as "US President".
Multiple terms can be combined together with Boolean operators to form a more complex query.
BOOLEAN OPERATORS
Boolean operators allow terms to be combined through logic operators. News Monitor supports AND, +, OR, NOT and - as Boolean operators. (Note: Boolean operators must be ALL CAPS).
OR:
To search for documents that contain either US or President, use the following query options:
US President
or
US OR President
AND: The AND operator matches documents where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single document. The symbol && can be used in place of the word AND.
To search for documents that contain both "US President" and Bush, use the following query options:
"US President" AND Bush
or
"US President" && Bush
+: The + operator requires that the term after the + symbol exist somewhere in a single document.
To search for documents that must contain "Bush" and may contain "US President" use the query:
+Bush "US President"
NOT: The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after NOT. The symbol ! can be used in place of the word NOT.
To search for documents that contain "Bush" but not "Kerry" use the query:
Bush NOT Kerry
or
Bush ! Kerry
-: The - operator excludes documents that contain the term after the - symbol.
To search for documents that contain "US President" but not "Bush", use the query:
"US President" -Bush
BOOSTING A TERM
News Monitor provides the relevance level of matching documents based on the terms found. To boost a term, use the caret, ^, symbol with a boost factor (a number) at the end of the term you are searching. The higher the boost factor, the more relevant the term will be. For example, if you are searching for "US President" and "Bush" and you want the term "Bush" to be more relevant, boost it using the ^ symbol along with the boost factor next to the term. You would type:
"US President" AND Bush^4
By default, the boost factor is 1. Although the boost factor must be positive, it can be less than 1 (e.g. 0.2)
GROUPING
News Monitor supports using parentheses to group clauses to form sub-queries. This can be very useful if you want to control the Boolean logic for a query.
To search for either "Clinton" or "Bush" and "US President" use the query:
(Clinton OR Bush) AND "US President"