Slice like a pro: Brackets for more than just smilie faces

:-) happy ;-) winking happy ;-)) with a double chin

Admit it. You've sent a smilie face to a a friend or two. But did you know brackets can bring you infinite joy when you're building your search strings? They're the crowdpleasers of the keyboard. Here's why...

1. Precedence
In Slice our search engine reads search strings from left to right, so to be sure of your search intent, use brackets. Brackets will group together your ideas and direct the search engine correctly. For example, say you want articles relating to computers in teaching or education. If you created this search string without brackets...

computers and teaching or education

... the search engine will process this string from left to right, with the "AND" request first, making the string read as "(Computers and Teaching) or Education" - which is a disaster! This string would give you all articles with the words "computers" AND "teaching", and then another bunch of articles which simply contain the word "education". This was not the intent of your orginial search!

But if you use brackets to clearly define your search as all articles containing the words "computers" AND either the words "teaching" OR "education" you would have a search string that looks like this:

computers AND (teaching OR education)
This will find articles containing the word "computers", and either "teaching" or "education".

The search string qualifer in Slice will help you with this too.


2. Clarity
Brackets work as a great visual aid when constucting complex strings. Here's an example of using brackets to break the search up into sections, for example:

computers AND (teaching OR education) NOT (higher OR secondary)
This will give news items containing the words "computers" and either "teaching" or "education", but will not give you the article is if the words "higher" or "secondary" are also in the article.

3. Variations
They're also helpful to group together variations of spellings which could be reported in various ways by the media. Here's an example if you were wanting to track stories about Dr Mike Whyte:

(Dr OR doctor) AND (Mike OR Michael) AND (Whyte OR White)

4. Combining searchesYou can also use brackets to bind together a series of searches to avoid having to develop separate tracking folders. For example if you wanted to track Dr Mike Whyte and Professor Jim McNamara here's what the string could look like:

((Dr OR doctor) AND (Mike OR Michael) AND (Whyte OR White)) AND ((Prof* OR Prf) AND (Jim OR James) AND (MacNamara OR McNamara))


We hope these tips have made you feel ;-)))))))

Tracking the media, monitoring the message

Doh! We couldn't help ourselves...

/.-( emo |:) unibrow @:^) elvis

Slice like a pro: Using the *asterisk*

Asterisk (Asterix) is more than a wacky French comic character... he's actually a very clever little minx when it comes to building great search strings.

In boolean speak, using an asterisk (sometimes also called a 'wildcard') at the end of a word will ensure you track all variations of how a word ends.

For example, placing an asterisk at the end of the word 'school*', will ensure you receive all news clips containing the words 'school', 'schools', 'schooling', 'schoolies' and 'schooled'.

Ski* will deliver news clips that have the words 'skiers', 'skis', 'skiing', or any other word starting with 'ski' present in the clip.

Reincarnat* will give you 'reincarnate', 'reincarnation', 'reincarnated' and 'reincarnates'.

Paint* will ensure you receive 'paints', 'painted' and 'painting'.

Helen* will return all articles with the word 'Helen', or 'Helens'.

An example of how a search string might include an asterix is:

environment* AND carbon AND (credit* OR trad*)

For more help information, check out the 'Help' link on your toolbar when you login to Slice. You can also download a pdf help file to have as a handy reference when building your search strings.

For other tips on building search strings, check out 'Slice like a pro' category on our blog here.

Tracking the media, monitoring the message

Slice like a pro: The 'within' command

From time to time we get asked for tips to improve search string relevance. If you're a confident search string builder and are using the 'free text' box, you may like to add the 'within' command to your media slicing arsenal.

The within command works like AND but allows you to stipulate the distance between related keywords. Generally, the closer the proximity of words, the more likely the keywords are to be related to one another. Hence the more likely the relevancy of the news item to your search intent.

The within command looks like this w/x where x is a number between 1 to 100. So the string you might build would look like this:

school W/5 policy

This search would yield news items where the word school appears within five words of policy.

The within operand also works well with lists of terms. It can be an alternative to writing lots of separate strings. Here's a few examples:

Gold Coast W/10 (tourism OR visitors OR backpackers)

Tourism W/20 (Gold Coast OR Noosa OR Whitsunday OR Cairns)

If you're a real power user, something this could work for you:

(food W/5 (packaging OR label* OR advertising)) AND (consumer* W/5 (protect* OR information OR warning))


Get to it Slicers.

Tracking the media, monitoring the message

Manage your folders

Here’s a few tips to keep your tracking folders nice and tidy for Spring.

On your tracking folder summary page you will notice three buttons next to your tracking folders – ‘Deactivate/Activate’, ‘Delete’ and ‘Edit’.

Deactivate/Activate: When you save a tracking folder it will automatically be in the ‘active’ state unless you manually choose to deactivate it. This means it will continue to track for media until you tell it to stop. The ‘deactivate’ function stops a folder from prospecting news items without deleting the folder. So you can keep your folders after the media issue or event has finished, and then reactivate it if want to track the issue or event again in the future.

You are permitted to have as many deactivated folders, as active folders, as defined by your package. However you must always have at least one active folder.

Delete: Deleting a tracking folder removes the folder from your subscription and it cannot be retrieved. You can however, always recreate the folder if you choose.

When you deactivate or delete a tracking folder, the news items contained within that folder are still accessible via the ‘Search’ feature until the copyright of the those items expires (45 days or 90 days for government subscribers).

Edit: The edit feature allows you change your tracking folder criteria, such as the search string, scope of coverage and folder name.

Track the media, monitor the message

Improve your search

I was recently contacted by a subscriber who had a long complicated search string and she wanted some tips on improving it. The string looked something like this:

(Acme AND (camping OR adventure OR yacht)) OR Acme Outboards OR (ABC AND camping) and Acme World Yacht Race

To improve her search, we gave her the following advice:

Keep it simple: one idea per tracking folder: If you have enough tracking folders, set up a folder for each idea you searching for – try to avoid combining keywords or issues in the same string, unless you feel very confident about creating boolean strings. In this case, she could have set up four tracking folders, one for each of the ideas she was tracking:

Acme AND (camping OR adventure OR yacht)
Acme Outboards
ABC AND camping
Acme World Yacht Race

Stick with the search string builder: if you’re unsure about how to build boolean strings, it’s best to stick with the search string builder. The search string builder was specifically designed to help people who had never built search strings. The search string builder will also ask you qualifying questions to ensure Slice knows exactly what you want to track.

Use brackets: If you do feel confident about using the free text box, build each of your ideas separately first, bracket each idea, then combine them. The original string would then look like this:

(Acme AND (camping OR adventure OR outdoor)) OR (Acme Outdoors) OR
(ABC AND camping) OR (Acme World Yacht Race)

Download the help document: after you have logged in to the site, a comprehensive help document about setting up your search strings is available for you to read on screen, or download as a pdf. This is handy to have by your side when setting up your strings.