Crafting powerful and precise queries is an important skill. One of the most valuable tools is boolean searching; boolean queries allow brands to extract the most valuable information from the internet.

Boolean queries are built on three fundamental operators: AND, OR, and NOT. These operators control how keywords are combined and filtered, allowing brands to precisely navigate the data. Understanding how they work is important to utilize them effectively:

• AND: This operator requires specific keywords to be present with other specific keywords in the results. For example, searching for (climate change AND impact) will only return responses that discuss both aspects.
• OR: This operator broadens the search by including results containing any specified keywords. For example, searching for (artificial intelligence OR machine learning) will return responses that mention either or both technologies.
• NOT: This operator excludes results containing the specified keyword. For example, searching for (electric vehicles NOT Tesla) will return information about other electric car brands.

In Crowd Analyzer we allow you to write boolean queries in two ways. There is the basic way, where you only add the words you need either of them under “ANY”, the words you want them to come with under “AND”, and exclude specific keywords by putting them under “NOT”.

The second way is the advanced search, where you write the keywords and the operators all by yourself.

Crowd Analyzer recently published a report analyzing Saudi Arabia’s latest tourism campaign “Saudi, Welcome to Arabia”;  in this report, boolean queries played a crucial role in understanding the campaign’s impact. This campaign released a video starring Messi in it. Crowd Analyzer was able to reach the posts related to this campaign by using boolean queries and was able to analyze the campaign’s success.

We used the OR operator to put all the keywords and hashtags related to the campaign so we could track any content related to it. For instance, we used the OR operator with keywords like: (Saudi, welcome to Arabia OR Saudi welcome to Arabia OR #ShareYourSaudi OR #السعودية_بعيونك).

But this wouldn’t get us all the buzz around this campaign, since people can talk about the advertisement and the campaign without mentioning any of the above keywords; they might only mention Messi or the latest tourism ad. Thus, we used keywords like Messi and Ad, then used AND to make sure all the results would only be related to that specific campaign. The query was similar to this:

Boolean queries are a valuable asset for us in Crowd Analyzer. By understanding their logic and applying it effectively, you can unlock deeper insights from your data, gain a clearer understanding of user behavior, and make informed decisions that drive your research forward.