Search Nexis® News with These Optimizing Commands

While conducting a news search can certainly be as easy as typing in a few keywords and hitting “enter,” there are many ways to optimize searches that you’re likely missing out on. Did you know you can specify what length of article you want to read, what languages the terms should be published in and even fine-tune your results to only see negative news?

If you’re not using search commands, you’re letting the technological advancements of our time simply go by--and making your workflow more complicated. Skip the headache with these helpful tips that you can use when researching news sources on Nexis and beyond.

Pro Tip #1: Apply post-search filters

Filtering specific publication types, timelines, and sources can help make sure you’re only seeing the most relevant entries.

On our platform, we recommend that you begin your search broadly and then use the “Search Within Results” filter to narrow your results. This will allow you to remove or edit your filters as needed without the need to run a new search. Here are some common filters that you can apply:

• Location: Restricts content to sources from selected locations. Note that there may be some cross-border indexing.
• Publication Type: Restricts content by type of publication such as newspapers or magazines. Use “Select Multiple” to combine publication types. Also see “Explore Content” for other useful content groupings.
• Timeline: Another way to limit the dates covered in the search results.
• Sources: Top 30 publications represented in the results. To narrow to publications not mentioned here, use the publication segment.

MORE: Search like a pro with these Nexis pro search tips

Pro Tip #2: Implement search commands to narrow down fields

Let’s say you want to only see entries from a specific year or region. Instead of clicking through pages of unrelated results, simple commands can help you out. With specific commands applying to length of an article and publishing dates, you can ensure that the results you see are all relevant to your needs.

• “At Least” command: Limit your results that mention your terms at least X number of times. Ex: atl3(volkswagen)
• Date: To limit results by date, use operators combined with the month/day/year. Operators include “=”, “>”, “<”, “<=”, “>=” and date should be in numerical format. For example, to limit to articles published after 2018, add this to your search: >12/31/2018
• Length segment: Limit results to documents of a particular length (word count). Ex: length>200; length<5000
• Language: To limit your results to English or another language use the TERM segment: term(english)
• Publication: Add this to your search to limit your results by publication name(s). Ex: publication(“Boston globe”)
• Industry or subject: Search SmartIndexing with the TERM For example, to limit your results to those that have been indexed as related to insurance, add this to search: term(insur*)
• Geography (as a subject): Add this to your search to limit your results to those about a particular location: term(usa)”) NOTE: To limit your results to a geographic region as the source of the publication, please use the Location filter.

MORE: How to use metadata in media monitoring

Pro Tip #3: Exclude the stories you don’t want to see

Perhaps you’re searching for a company, but don’t want to be flooded with stock information for the first few pages of results. Or maybe you need to get information on a person but exclude obituaries that come up under that name. These commands will make sure you’re not clicking through dozens of unnecessary results.

• Excluding non-business news: Add this to your search if you would like to remove non-business content. Replace [word] with the name of the entity you are researching. Ex: [word] and not term(“Anniversaries” OR “Births & Birth Rates”)
• Excluding obituaries: Add this to your search if you would like to remove obituaries. Replace [word] with the name of the entity you are researching. Ex: [word] and not obit* and not term(deaths)
• Excluding stock stories: If you wish to exclude stories from your results that are primarily about stock price fluctuations an stock analyst recommendations, add this to your search to remove the majority of them. Replace [word] with the name of the entity or a keyword you are researching. Ex: [word] and not publication(global round up or news bites)
• Negative news: Should you wish to run a “negative news” search on an entity, here is a search you can apply. Replace [word] with the name of the entity or a keyword you are researching. You can also adjust the proximity and individual terms as needed. Ex: [term] w/15 (abus* or allegati*or ambush* or arrest*)

MORE: 6 ways premium news data yields better business performance 

Streamline your news searches with the right search commands

Although this is by no means an exhaustive list of the potential commands, it’s a great starting point for understanding the specifications available at your fingertips. By filtering your search results, you’ll save hours of work time and improve your ability to find exactly what you want, when you want it.

Get started searching with Nexis now.