Online Clipping Service

There are 3 important components of your Search Definition

What keywords/phrases you are looking for in the articles?
What keywords/phrases represent poor matches and you do not want those articles?
Which news sources do you want Clip Genius to search for the articles?

Keywords/Phrases that you are looking for:

You can specify multiple terms (see below), separated by spaces, for a total of 100 characters. Please do not use commas or plus/minus signs or Boolean keywords such as AND, OR, NOT, etc. It does not matter if you enter the words in upper or lowercase. However, other than case, words will be searched for exactly as you have typed them, so be careful with your spelling.

You can refine your searches by using some of the advanced term definition methods. Clip Genius provides you with three advanced definition tools:
1. Exact Phrases: This can include company names (such as “Krispy Kreme”) and multi-word concepts (such as “Health Care Reform”). Multiple sets of exact phrases can also be used.
  Example search terms: "Educational Choice" "School Choice"
2. Auto-expand Word: Any words prefixed by a dollar sign $ are automatically expanded by Clip Genius to include all their various grammatical expansions.
  
  For example, the search term $president would give you results that would include the words president, presidential, and presidents.
3. Concept Groups: When you want to search for keywords that are linked conceptually they are likely to occur close to each other. To search for key terms within 50 words of each other, you can insert the reserved word NEAR between them.
  
  For example, if you were to search for George NEAR Bush you would receive stories with George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, or Bush, George in them.
  
  This can be useful when your search terms are so broad that you don’t want every story that has any of the terms, but limiting to an exact phrase would make your search too narrow.
ALL of the terms or ANY of the terms?

Next, you must determine whether each article should include ALL of your terms/phrases or if you want articles with ANY of your terms/phrases. You do this by selecting the "All of the above terms" option or the "Any one or more of the above terms" option.

For example, you may want information about Microsoft OR Novell. If it does not matter which company is mentioned in the article, you would want to select the option for "Any one or more of the above terms."

Let's say you entered the search term: President Bush. Selecting the "Any of the above terms" radio option will give you all stories with either president OR bush in their text. If you were to select "All of the above terms" you would only receive stories with both president AND bush in their text.

Keywords/Phrases that you do not want:

This is to help you avoid getting articles that you don’t want, even though they contain your key search terms. The rules for syntax and term definition are the same (see below).

An example would be: If your search term was HEART and then your exclusion terms might be “HEART THROB” ”HEART $BREAK” “HEART WARMING”

By using these exclusion terms, you would exclude stories that have your search terms but also include heart throb, heart warming, heart break, heart breaks, and heart breaking.

Selecting News Source:

Many people initially select all news sources and then selectively filter out the news sources that they feel are resulting in irrelevant or less important stories. You can do this by limiting your selection to certain groups or by filtering individual news sources. (Feature only available in professional packages.)

Saving Your Search

Once you have defined your search, you can either Save it or Save and Test it. You can save your search by simply clicking the Save button. However, if you would like to save your search and test it, you can click the Save and Test button. When you save and test your search, Clip Genius will run a small search based on older news and send you a sample of the results you would have received. This will give you the opportunity to see if you are getting the types of results you want. If you are satisfied with the search, don’t change anything. But if you want to make changes, simply click the Edit button in your results and refine your search.