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In the early 19th century, a clever fellow and British mathematician named George Boole was about to make some scientific achievements that would lead him to be considered the co-founder of information science. He is to be thanked for the development of the so-called Boolean search.
The Boolean search is a type of expression used in some programming languages. Among other things, it makes use of the operators + / - to indicate whether elements are included in a data set or not – for example, terms in a search.
Regarding its application, the Boolean search is used in search engines like Google, in social media platforms such as Twitter, and is particularly important in media monitoring.
In contrast to some search engines, the sole aim of media monitoring is not obtaining as many results as possible but detecting as many accurate results as possible and being able to delineate the information received. For this reason, it is a clear advantage to use a media monitoring tool such as the SaaS by eMedia Monitor, which uses Boolean search.
While in some cases, the Boolean operators might not be absolutely necessary, they are always an advantage since they can highly improve the quality of any searches.
Let´s look at the following example: A media agency wants to keep track of all information about the cartoon character Minnie Mouse broadcast on TV for its customer, an international entertainment and media company.
Now, if the agency would simply enter the full name in the search bar the results would include all the clips including the words “Minnie” or “Mouse”. This is because the Boolean search interprets a blank space between two words basically as “or” as long as no other operator – such as plus or minus – is added.
Obviously, filtering out all the results that don’t refer to the small rodent in this case would be a monster task. Using the Boolean operators, content can be filtered like this: Minnie +Mouse. This ensures that only results in which all the terms occur are displayed.
Besides, if using quotation marks like “Minnie Mouse”, clips would be narrowed down to only those that contain the search term in this exact order.
If a media agency wants to make sure that they don’t get any animal broadcast clips then terms such as “animal”, “rodent” or “nature” should be excluded by inserting minus like this: “Minnie Mouse“ -(Animal Rodent Nature).
The Boolean search is easy to learn. However, there are specific media monitoring solutions which enhance its usefulness.
This is the case of the eMM Pegasus Media Monitoring Tool, which integrates the Query Visualization feature making it possible to assess the results of the search in advance.
Even the most complex searches can be turned into a clear query using the Boolean operators and the clever eMM feature.
Let’s see a final example:
An international political think tank is interested in observing all the information about Boris Johnson, Ursula von der Leyen or Jean-Claude Junker and the EU or the Brexit (they want to avoid any results for content about Angela Merkel or Emmanuel Macron), and about the British Pound (not about Euro) at the same time.
They also want to avoid getting results about Donald Trump, the US and the US-Dollar.
Using the Boolean operators and with help of the eMM Query Visualization, the search would look like this:
Should a customer still be at odds with the Boolean operators, our Support Team will gladly assist in setting up the search profiles or take care of it directly for you.
Summing it up, the Boolean search is a simple but powerful tool delivering the exact results you really need. Customers worldwide rely on the eMM Pegasus Media Monitoring SaaS, which uses exactly this technology.
Do not hesitate to get in contact and try it yourself.
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