Configuring a press review and monitoring search

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In this tutorial you will learn how to configure a search in the PMG press review portal.

How do you configure a media monitoring search and how do you add the relevant keywords? Refer to this guide when using the PMG press review portal for the first time. If you are already familiar with our portal, you can use this guide to review and improve your searches.

Configuring a search – first steps

If you would like to use the PMG press database for your daily media evaluation and you are asking yourself the following questions: How do I get started? How do I filter the results correctly? What should I include when creating the search query?

Then you have come to the right place because the search function is key to configuring your media monitoring and press review. We will show you how to configure a search in the PMG press review portal in order to filter the results that are relevant to you.

First, log in to the portal with your user account and go directly to the search area via the main menu. As with search engines, you can simply enter a single term in the search field, for example, “fine dust”

Press Enter twice or select “Search” to search for results immediately. Thanks to powerful technology and the indexing of around 200,000 articles per day, a full-text search can be carried out quickly. Articles can be searched up to 60 days after publication.

Which media do you want to search? For example, under “Sources”, select all or only the sources that are relevant to you. We have already created some practical sectors to help you. You can also exclude publications.

Use the asterisk to make your search more flexible. It works as a placeholder or “wildcard”. Append it to search terms to find longer terms or compound terms with the same initial element.

dust*

Search strategy – what keywords do you want to monitor?

Usually, it’s not just a single term you are interested in. To develop your search strategy for a topic, first research the relevant terms (keywords):

• Your topic: Define the topic you wish to research, for example your company, a product, a brand, an industry topic or a competitor.
• Synonyms: Find words that have the same meaning as your topic
• Superordinate concepts: Find superordinate or higher-level topics
• Subordinate concepts: Determine which subordinate topics your concept can be broken down into
• Related expressions: Identify related topics
• Translations: Define which languages are relevant for you and translate the terms

Excluded words: You have found some terms related to your topic. Now it’s time to identify those that are irrelevant to you. The best way to do this is to carry out a random sample search. You can see from the hit list whether articles that are not related to the topic are displayed. Find words that are unrelated to your topic and exclude them from the search.

Example: The search term “queen” refers to the British monarchy. As articles about the band Queen are also displayed, we exclude terms like “Freddie Mercury” and “Rock band”.

Also be aware of the different forms of the terms. For example, both “city” and “cities” may be used. The more terms you think of here, the more results your search will deliver

Combining terms with operators

All terms can be individually linked in the search using operators. If you enter two terms in the search field, they are automatically linked with AND. In other words, both terms must appear in the article for it to appear in the hit list. However, you can also enter “AND” for AND links.

“Fine dust” AND “driving ban”

In an OR operation, only one of the terms needs to be present to appear in the hit list. For OR links, enter “OR”. You can also write all operators in lower case. However, we recommend using upper case.

“fine dust” OR “driving ban”

To find phrases, i.e. consecutive groups of words, put them in double quotation marks.

“German environmental aid”

You do not need to worry about the capitalisation of your search terms. Terms can be found even if the capitalisation differs from the term entered. Dashes and other special characters are read as spaces.

“german environmental aid”

Brackets help you to group keywords and link them to other terms.

“fine dust” AND (“German environmental aid” OR “driving ban”)

The NEAR function can be used to search for terms that are close together – no more than eight words apart.

“fine dust” NEAR “driving ban”

With AND NOT, you exclude unimportant keywords and reduce the number of hits. The more thoroughly you exclude irrelevant terms, the more accurate your hit list.

“fine dust” AND NOT sahara

Attributes and search fields

You can also search only for articles where a term appears in the title. Use the attribute search “TITLE”.

TITLE=”driving ban”

Other useful attributes include location, date, person or department.

For greater clarity, you can use multiple search fields. These can be linked with OR or AND. If you would like to retrieve the search later, you can save it. Searches are saved under “Saved searches”.

Now you know the key functions for carrying out a full-text search and how to configure a search.

The thematic press review

However, there is a second method of creating a press review: the thematic press review

If you want to keep up to date with one or more specialist topics (for example, sports or medicine), a thematic press review is the ideal choice. Use topic selection to determine which content to search. This method is based on the IPTC standard.

You can apply categories either to your entire search or to individual search fields. This allows you to combine topics with other topics or with specific search terms.

Conclusion

You are now familiar with the functions needed to create searches in the PMG press review portal and to view results. The key areas covered by the training are as follows:

• You can develop a search strategy
• You know how to create, run and save a search
• You know how to use operators to join search terms
• You learned how to create a thematic press review

Help & Support

For further reading and information, click on the Search term input help link (directly in the portal). We are here to support you and to ensure you get the most out of your media monitoring.