Learn the Complete Boolean Library

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Margot Underdown
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Boolean queries allow you to define precisely what you are looking for in a search. The most used search operators are AND, OR, and AND NOT but they are not the only ones available to you.

Below is a complete list of all the search operators you can use when building queries.

We've organized each Boolean operator into categories. Click on a category to jump to its section.

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Common Operators

 Search  Action  Example  Result
 AND   Narrows your search by retrieving mentions where all search terms are present.  atlantic  AND  “sailboat racing”   Any document where “Atlantic” and “sailboat racing” are both included.
 OR  Expands your search to retrieve mentions containing at least one search term.  sailing OR  sailboat  Either the term before or the term after “OR” must appear in the document.
 NOT  Excludes mentions containing an unwanted term.  sailboat  NOT race  Any document where “race” does not pull in as a result.
 AND/OR  Use this when you need a keyword to pull results alongside one or more other keywords.  sailboat AND ( racing  OR race )  Any document where “sailboat” and either “racing” or “race” are present.
 ASTERISK  Use this when you are looking for one or more different keywords in a document.  sail *  Matches documents that have the keywords sail, sailing, sailboat, etc.
 SENTIMENT  Matches documents with provided sentiment. Supported values: positive, neutral, negative, and not rated.   sentiment:" positive "  Any document that has been assigned positive sentiment.
 COUNTRY  Matches documents created in the specified country. Must use the 2-letter codes to specify the country.

  country:" us "

 Any document that was created by a source in the US.
 LANGUAGE  Matches documents that have a specified language. Must use the 2-letter code to specify language, with the exception of Chinese (“zh-hans” or “zh-hant”). Must use lowercase.

language:" es "

 Any document that was created in Spanish.
 TITLE  Matches documents that have the specified word/phrase in the title.

title:"Sailing the World"

 Any document that has “Sailing the World” in its title.
 COLON The colon is a character used in Boolean expressions. We see it used many times in this library. If you wish to use a colon in your keywords then you must use it in quotations so that the system doesn't think it's a Boolean expression, e.g. stock symbols.    " Euronext:ROTH "  Any document that contains "Euronext:ROTH".
 CONTENT  Matches documents that have the specified word/phrase in the body.

  content:" George Mendonsa"

 Any document that has “George Mendonsa” in the body.

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Source Operators

Search

Action

Example

Result

SOURCE

Find all documents from a particular source.

sourceName:"Washington Post"

 

Returns documents from the source named Washington Post

 

URL

Matches documents from a specific URL.

URL:" https://www.elitedaily.
com/p/25-sailing-quotes-f
or-instagram-thatll-get-y
ou-likes-while-you-cruise
-into-the-sunset-185477
07 "

Returns documents from
the URL
"https://www.elitedaily.co
m/p/25-sailing-quotes-for
-instagram-thatll-get-you
-likes-while-you-cruise-in
to-the-sunset-18547707"

LINK

Matches documents that have specified link in document body.

link:" https://t.co/tndg9jSukj"

Returns documents that
have the URL
https://t.co/tndg9jSukj"
in its content.

AUTHOR

Matches documents by a
specific author or
username.

author:" Yachting World"

Returns documents from
“Yachting World”.

DATA SOURCE

Matches documents from a specific data source. Source must be lowercase. See appendix for full list. 

metaData.source.informationType:"news"  AND sailing

 Returns News documents with the term "sailing".

 

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Proximity Operators

Search

Action

Example

Result

NEAR

Retrieve results for two words in close proximity with each other. 

sailboat NEAR racing

Any document where the “sailboat” and “racing” are within 4 words of each other.

NEAR/N

Retrieve results within a specific distance of one another. The number used determines the distance.

sailboat  NEAR/10  racing

Any document where the keywords “sailboat” and “racing” are within 10 words of each other.

ONEAR

Use this when you’d like a document to have two words in close proximity to one another and in the same order.

sailboat  ONEAR  racing

Any document where “sailboat” is followed by “racing” within 4 words.

ONEAR/N

Use this when keywords need to be within a specific distance of one another and in the same order

sailboat  ONEAR/10  racing

Any document where “sailboat” is followed by “racing” within 10 words.
WORD FREQUENCY

Use this when you need a keyword to occur a number of times.

Sailboat {5}  OR race {4,10}  OR ocean {3, }  OR cup {,2}

  • “Sailboat” occurs exactly 5 times
  • “Race” occurs at least 4 and at most 10 times
  • “Ocean” occurs at least 3 times
  • “Cup” occurs at most 2 times

INGRESS

 Matches documents containing the specified keyword/phrase in the first paragraph

Ingress:"yacht race"

Any document that contains “yacht race” in the first paragraph.

 

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Social Media Operators

Search

Action

Example

Result

HASHTAG

Matches documents that contain a hashtag.

hashtag:"sailing"

Returns documents that contain #sailing.

EMOJI

Matches documents that contain an emoji.

emojis:😉

Returns documents that contain the 😉 emoji.

TWITTER HANDLE

Matches documents where a Twitter handle was mentioned.

@sailmagazine

Returns Twitter documents that mention @sailmagazine.

TWEET ID

Matches the ID of tweets stored within Meltwater. No quotation marks around tweet id.

tweetId:1271689604677025792

Returns the Tweet with the matching ID 1271689604677025792

TWITTER THREAD

Matches replies, retweets, and quoted tweets from a specific tweet. Add in the tweet ID to return this data.

twitterThread:437331053657980928

Returns content from the
thread of the tweet ID
437331053657980928.

FACEBOOK PAGE

Matches documents from a specific Facebook page using the page’s ID and asterisks. Use this site to find a page's ID.

url:"http://www.facebook.com/73471073870/*"

Returns documents from the Facebook page “Sailing World”.

TO

Matches documents with social media handles/usernames that were mentioned. This operator must be used in lowercase.

to:"americascup"

Any document mentioning the handle/username “AmericasCup”.

FROM

Matches documents that were posted by social media handles/usernames. This operator is case sensitive.

from:"worldsailing"

Any document that is published from the handle/username “worldsailing”

HANDLE

Matches documents that were posted by social media handles/usernames.

handle:"worldsailing"

Any document that is published from the handle/username “worldSailing”

MENTION

Matches documents with social media handles/usernames that were mentioned in the document.

mention:"yachtracinglife"

Any document mentioning the handle/username “YachtRacingLife”.

VERIFIED TWITTER HANDLES

Matches documents from authors with a verified Twitter handle.

verified:true  

Returns Twitter documents from verified handles.

UNVERIFIED TWITTER HANDLES

Matches documents from authors with an unverified Twitter handle.

verified:false 

Returns Twitter documents from unverified handles.

ORIGINAL POST/TWEET

Matches documents that are original posts on Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram.

metaData.discussionType: og

Returns documents from Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram that are original posts.

REPLY TO POST/TWEET

Matches documents that reply on Twitter, and Reddit.

metaData.discussionType: re

Returns documents from Twitter and Reddit that are replies.

QUOTED TWEET

Matches documents that are quoted tweets on Twitter.

metaData.discussionType: qt

Returns documents from Twitter that are quoted tweets.

RETWEET

Matches documents that are retweets on Twitter.

metaData.discussionType:  rp

Returns documents from Twitter that are retweets.

FACEBOOK COMMENTS

Matches documents that are comments on a Facebook page. (The comment operator is applicable to other sources. To see Facebook only, filter by Facebook).

author:Comment AND author:" Sailing World " (and Facebook source filter applied).

Returns comments on the Facebook page, "Sailing World".

Note: the Facebook page URL operator does not work in combination with the comment operator as comments do not contain the Facebook page ID.

FACEBOOK VISITOR POSTS

Matches documents on a Facebook page that come from a visitor.

author:"visitor post" AND sailing

Returns posts on Facebook pages from visitors that mention "sailing".

AUTHORITY

Matches documents that have an authority score for the author that is equal, greater, or smaller than provided value. Uses inequality operators (see appendix).

authority >= 5 

Returns documents from sources with an authority score of 5.

TWITTER BIO

Matches Twitter documents that have a specified term in the author’s bio information.

bio: "yacht enthusiast"

Matches documents from authors that have “yacht enthusiast” in their bio information.

TWITTER FOLLOWERS

Matches Twitter documents from handles that have a number of followers greater, less than, or equal to the value provided. Uses >, >+, <, <=).
Note use colon (:) for exact number of followers, not equal sign. 

 followers: 1000

Matches documents from Twitter handles with exactly 1,000 followers

SUBREDDIT

Matches Reddit documents from a specific Subreddit.

SourceName: /r/Boating

Returns Reddit documents from the Subreddit “r/Boating”.

REDDIT, FORUM or FACEBOOK THREAD BY TITLE

Matches Reddit, Forum or Facebook documents under threads with matching title.

ThreadTitle: "Perfect evening for a little Spanish mackerel fishing"

Returns Reddit documents from the thread "Perfect evening for a little Spanish mackerel fishing".

REDDIT, FORUM or FACEBOOK THREAD BY URL

Matches Reddit, Forum or Facebook documents from a specific URL.

ThreadUrl:

"https://www.reddit.com/

r/boating/comments/cmkchi/aww/"

Returns Reddit documents from the thread URL "https://www.reddit.com/r/boating/

comments/cmkchi/aww/"

CLIENT

Matches documents that have used a recognized device to publish a social media post (same as postSource).

client: "Twitter for Android"

Returns Twitter documents that were published using the Android Twitter app.

POSTSOURCE

Matches documents that have used a recognized device to publish a social media post (same as client).

postSource: "Twitter for Android"

Returns Twitter documents that were published using the Android Twitter app. 

SHARES

Matches news documents and Tweets when the number of Facebook shares or Twitter retweets is equal, greater or smaller than the provided value. Uses inequality operators (see appendix).

sailing AND shares > 5000

Returns news documents and Tweets with the term "sailing" that have over 5,000 Facebook shares or Twitter retweets.

UNPACKED LINKS

Matches Twitter or Reddit documents that share a URL in the content. Particularly useful for unmasking t.co links. Use a specific link or a general domain with an asterisk to find all shared links from that site.

link:”https://www.amazon.com*” 

Matches documents that share URLs from the site Amazon.com.

SOCIAL CHANNEL

Matches documents from a specific social channel: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Reddit. Must be lower case. 

Use instead of source filters if search terms vary per source and user wants multiple sources returned in results.

(metaData.source.socialOriginType:" twitter ” AND to:sailingworldmag) OR (metaData.source.socialOriginType:" facebook ” AND author:”Sailing World” AND author:Comment)


Matches tweets that are to @SailingWorldMag and Facebook comments on the Facebook page “Sailing World”.

LIKES

Matches Tweets and Facebook posts when the number of likes on the posts is equal, greater or smaller than the provided value. Uses inequality operators (see appendix).

sailing AND likes > 5000

Returns Tweets and Facebooks posts with the term "sailing" which have over 5,000 likes.

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Complex Operators

Search

Action

Example

Result

NEWS REACH

Matches news documents with a number of unique visitors that are equal, greater, or smaller than provided value. Uses inequality operators (see appendix).

sailing AND reach > =10000

Any document that contains the word “sailing” and that has reach greater than or equal to 10,000.

PRODUCT REVIEW RATING

Matches Product Review
documents with a specific
rating. Reviews are normalized on a percentage scale from
0-100. For example, 80 would represent 80% positive or 4/5 stars.

ratings > 80 AND sailboat

Returns Product Review
documents that mention
“sailboat” and have a review
higher than 80%.

TAG

Matches documents that have been assigned a specific Meltwater tag. Tag name is case sensitive.

tag:Event

Returns documents that have
been assigned the tag named
"Event".

CATEGORY

Classifies a document according to a taxonomy of topics (e.g. business, sports, etc.) that belong to the source. Category searching can be used to increase the relevance of search results and only return documents that fall into the specified category.

Category: "Sports"

Any document from a source whose topic is classified as “Sports”.

CONCEPT

Classifies documents into “concepts” based off key phrases and themes in Wikipedia.

Meltwater has analyzed Wikipedia pages using a proprietary algorithm that finds unique keywords, phrases, and themes. These are then attributed to the Wiki page’s topic and the topic becomes a “concept”.

Any document in Meltwater that contains those unique keywords, phrases, and themes will be categorized as that concept.

Use this to help refine searches by concept (topic) instead of by keyword. This is helpful when your keywords aren’t unique to a specific topic, but you want to return results from a specific topic without limiting your scope with exact qualifying keywords.

concept:Sailing

The “Sailing” article in Wikipedia is about the physical act of sailing (e.g. wind velocity, tacking, sail structure, etc.). This example would return documents that also mention those key themes as it relates to sailboats.

It would not return returns about yachting races or events unless sailing themes were a key part of the article. For that, we would want to use the concept “Yachting” and documents returned would reflect the key themes in the “Yachting” Wikipedia page.

PREFERENCE

Boost or reduce the score of a word, phrase or sub-expression and decide what is more likely to appear in the hit sentence. The default score is 1, so greater numbers can be used to boost the score, while decimal numbers between 0 and 1 can be used to reduce the score.

You must use the ^ in conjunction with numbers (ideally, multiples of 10). Depending on the number given to a keyword, the precedence will be given there. So the higher the number, the more the search is catered to that particular keyword.

Race AND (yacht ^2 or sailing ^0.5 )

Any document that contains the word “race” and either “yacht” or “sailing”. This does not affect the number of results, but affects what keywords are highlighted in the hit sentence of the results.

An example of when to use: for email reports when you want a specific keyword from your Boolean to show in the hit sentence.

QUESTION MARK

Use this when you are 

looking for one or more different keywords in a document.

“sen ? ”

Any document that contains keywords such as “sent” or “send”.

XNOT

Use this when you want to ignore a keyword in special combination with other words or phrases.

bill  XNOT  “bill gates”

Any document where “bill” is present unless it only contains “bill gates”.
E.g. a document with content “Bill Murray met Bill Gates” is returned but not one with “Bill Gates makes billions”.

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Appendix

INEQUALITY OPERATOR

> Greater than

Used in:

>= Greater or equal to
  • Reach
  • Authority
  • Shares
  • Twitter followers
  • Product review rating
< Less than
<= Less or equal to

 

DATA SOURCE/SOCIAL CHANNEL OPERATORS

  • metaData.source.informationType:“news”
  • metaData.source.informationType:“social”
  • metaData.source.informationType:“broadcast”
  • metaData.source.socialOriginType:“twitter”
  • metaData.source.socialOriginType:“facebook”
  • metaData.source.socialOriginType:“instagram”
  • metaData.source.socialOriginType:“reddit”
  • metaData.source.socialOriginType:“youtube”
  • metaData.source.socialOriginType:“social_comments”
  • metaData.source.socialOriginType:“social_reviews”
  • metaData.source.socialOriginType:“social_message_boards”
  • metaData.source.socialOriginType:“social_blogs”
  • SourceName:"publication name"
  • metaData.mediaType:"au"       (Radio/audio content from broadcast)
  • metaData.mediaType:"vi"        (TV/video content from broadcast)

SENTIMENT OPERATOR

Positive

sentiment:"positive"

Negative

sentiment:"negative"

Neutral 

sentiment:"neutral"

Not Rated

sentiment:"u"

 

CONCEPT OPERATOR

Because the core dependency of the concept search is Wikipedia, it only works with concepts for which Wikipedia pages exist, and only for those languages for which Wikipedia pages exist.

CATEGORY OPERATOR

Category names are in English. The category list below is ordered based on frequency of occurrence with the most common at the top.

  1. Business
  2. Science
  3. Sports
  4. Government
  5. Finance
  6. Health & Medicine 
  7. Food & Beverage
  8. Entertainment
  9. Politics
  10. Technology
  11. Energy
  12. Manufacturing
  13. Culture
  14. Information Technology
  15. Legal
  16. Religion
  17. Arts
  18. Engineering
  19. Hobbies & Leisure
  20. Agriculture
  21. Computers
  22. Education
  23. Electronics 
  24. Transportation
  25. Building & Construction
  26. Lifestyle
  27. Economy
  28. Trade
  29. Social Media
  30. E-commerce
  31. Stock Market
  32. Animals
  33. Military
  34. Telecommunications
  35. Materials
  36. Retail
  37. Design
  38. Careers
  39. Crime
  40. News & Media
  41. Insurance
  42. Automotive
  43. Travel
  44. Family
  45. Music
  46. House & Home
  47. Personal
  48. Consumer Goods & Services
  49. Aviation
  50. Real Estate
  51. Nautical
  52. Resources
  53. Beauty
  54. Pharmaceutical
  55. Logistics
  56. Fashion
  57. Architecture & Design
  58. Non Governmental Organizations
  59. News & Current Affairs
  60. Hospitality 
  61. Local

 

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