Article search (+guidance on searching effectively)

​Article search is our main search to help you uncover journalists who have recently written articles related to your campaign, and will therefore be highly likely to be interested in your campaign.

It's one of our two types of article search, the second being Google News search.

Domain: This allows you to limit the results to a particular domain, such as Forbes or Business Insider. Simply type the name of the outlet you want to filter on in the box and select the domain.
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Language: The default language is English. If you wish to search for articles in another language, you can amend this filter. You will need to type your search query in the language you have selected.
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Location: The location filter is based on the readership of the outlet. When an outlet has more than 20% of its readers in a particular country, its content appears in that country's filter results.
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As an example, 41% of the Daily Mail’s readers are in the US, and 36% are in the UK. This means domains from the Daily Mail will show up under both the UK and USA location filters.
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Domain authority: This allows you to filter on domains with DA 40+, 60+, or 80+.
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Time period: This allows you to filter on time periods including 1 year, 6 months, and 3 months.
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Grouping: By default, the results show each individual article, but you can also choose to group the articles up by journalist.

Article search is designed to be intuitive, and with the faster results it’s much easier to play around with different search terms until you find the best option.

It's important to understand that article search is a keyword search, so it will return results that match the keywords you have entered.

If words can be spelt differently, or written with different grammar - you will need to search both variations.

For example if you search "Valentines Day", you will not see results mentioning "Valentine's Day" (with the apostrophe), so you should try both searches to uncover as many journalists as possible.

1) Make continual small adjustments to the search to discover more journalists.

For example, if searching “home owner costs” doesn’t give the results you were hoping for

Try switching it up with:

2) Keep searches focused and headline first.

Use tight phrases like “homeownership costs” rather than long keyword lists (which confuse the search) or broad topics like “real estate” (which are too vague to be useful).

And always think headline first.

Search for words and phrases journalists use in headlines in your niche.

If you know of a recent headline that got coverage in your niche - this is a great first search to make.

3) Don’t cram multiple ideas into one search. This weakens relevance.

E.g. "home improvement, real estate, interior design, contractor shortages" is not a good search.

4) Use natural, everyday language but skip filler words like the, a, or about.

These just clutter the search.
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e.g. "the cost of owning a home" would become "cost owning home"

5) Search for synonyms.

Don’t stop at home improvement — try renovation, DIY, and maintenance too.

6) Use search operators to better control your results.

More on this a bit further down.

Here are some example searches.
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Articles you want to surface: I want to search for articles where people have given expert tips about skincare in the UK.
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Best search to make: “skincare expert”, with the location set to “United Kingdom”.

This will return articles that mention both ‘skincare’ and ‘expert’ in the title or description.
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Adding extra words like 'skincare expert warns' or 'skincare expert reveals' will still surface lots of relevant skincare articles.

However, you may also see unrelated 'expert warns' articles that aren't about skincare, like the homeowner one in the search below.

This is because each word in your query has the same weighting, so “expert warns” is determined as relevant as “skincare expert”.

Articles you want to surface: Studies done in the auto industry in the USA.
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Example searches to make: “car study”, "cities ranked drivers", “states worst drivers”, or “expensive states car ownership”, with location set to ‘United States’.

This is an example of the upside down triangle approach. First, make a broad search such as ‘car study’ or ‘driver study’ to give you an idea of some recent studies that have been covered.
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Then, narrow your focus with more headline-specific searches (e.g. "expensive states car ownership") to help uncover as many journalists as possible.

To find regional journalists with Article search, it's best to include the name of the location you are interested in in your search.

You can also filter the results to an specific outlet you know targets the location you're interested in.

Here's a worked example:

Articles you want to surface: Studies in the auto industry in Houston, Texas.
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Example searches to make: “intitle:houston worst drivers”, “intitle:houston study traffic”.

By using the "intitle" search operator, you are making sure you’re surfacing articles with the word “Houston” in the title.
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The search will work without the "intitle" operator, but you'll also see outlets that aren’t specific to Houston.

You can use the following common search operators:
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"Quotation marks" - Searches for an exact phrase in that specific order. For example, "mental health" finds pages with those exact words together.

Use AND to require both words (elon AND trillionaire)
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Use OR to broaden searches (best hotel OR best resort)
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Use intitle: to find articles with your term in the headline, for example "intitle:gin launch".

The intitle: operator is useful for returning location-specific results (as seen above).

Minus (-) - Excludes specific terms from your search. For example, "gin launch -snoop dogg" would show results about gin launches, but exclude any mentioning Snoop Dogg's Gin.

You can also remove entire domains with "-site:", for example, "-site:forbes.com" will remove any forbes results.

You can also combine any of these search operators.

To learn more about the different search operators, check out this article.
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Any typos or spelling mistakes will not be autocorrected or recognised by the search.
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If you aren’t seeing the results you expected, it’s possible you made a spelling mistake.
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Grammar like apostrophes and dashes will also have an effect on the results.
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For example:
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If you search “Valentines day” you will only be shown results with that exact grammar configuration. You will not be shown results that use an apostrophe i.e. “Valentine’s day”.
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Since most headlines use the grammatically correct 'Valentine's Day', with an apostrophe, this would be the best version for your search.

If you're looking to reach journalists who are covering a currently breaking news story, Google News search is the best option for this.