New on Pulsar: Near operator, for more accurate data

17th February 2016

Today, we're very excited to announce the launch of near operator on Pulsar. Near operator, commonly referred to as the proximity operator, will allow users to target their searches and get more accurate data - with a lot less effort - across all channels.

Near operator GIF

How does it work?

If you're a user on the platform and unfamiliar with how near operator works, or you simply want to know more about near operator, here's a step-by-step guide:

  • Use the tilde symbol (~) in your syntax at search setup.
  • The maximum number of keywords you can specify is 6. This is the total number of words you can have between all the matching keywords in your query.
  • You can query for 2 or more keywords.
  • Works across all data sources apart from Instagram.

Near operator screenshot on Pulsar

Near operator is useful when you want to bring back data about a specific topic, and you need to narrow down your search. For example, you want to dive into a pool of data on people talking about Apple and iPhones. To make sure the data is relevant you can use near operator to ensure the two keywords are 1 - 6 words apart in any content. This is to weed out any pieces of content, like a blog, where the keywords are written whole paragraphs apart, which could make that piece of data less relevant to your dataset.Confused? Here's a few examples of how this should work in practice:

Query: “apple iPhone”~6
Match: “I love Apple products, especially the new bigger handset iPhone 6s.”
Match: Business for Apple should benefit from the high Chinese iPhone adoption.”
Query: “apple iPhone mobile”~3
Match: "Selling a used Apple iPhone 6s plus 16GB Mobile phone."
Match: “Apple developed iPhone and pioneered mobile technology.”

If you’re already using Pulsar and want to learn more about near operator feature, please contact your account manager or email: [email protected].

Alternatively, if you’re yet to experience the power of Pulsar and you’d like to set up a demo, email [email protected] or call us on 020 7874 6577.

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