Are you bringing in irrelevant mentions? Sometimes key terms need some additional context. The NEAR/ operator will help with that. Let’s take a deep dive…

Using NEAR/

(((Christmas OR Xmas) NEAR/2 (Gift OR Present))

Using Multiple NEAR/ Operators

NEAR/ is great for adding context, but maybe it's not enough. Try using multiple NEAR/’s. By continuing your search string with another set of NEAR criteria you can continue to refine the search and relevancy.

(((Christmas OR Xmas) NEAR/2 (Gift OR Present)) NEAR/2 (wife OR “girl friend”))

Adding Structure

You even have the option of adding sentence or term structure to the context by using NEAR/ f. By adding an ‘f’ after our NEAR/ we can add structure to our search string. Summer NEAR/1f Holiday for example will mean that Summer is found in front of Holiday, and only one word apart. This is great for targeting a format of conversation and giving your results structure. The use of “f” is effectively the same as the WITHIN operator.

((Christmas OR Xmas) NEAR/0f (“Mince Pie” OR Pudding))

It is effectively a time saving and simple alternative to: “Xmas Mince Pie” OR “Christmas Pudding”

Another example could be:

((Summer) NEAR/1f (Holiday OR Vacation))

Would capture ‘Summer sun holiday’ or ‘Summer beach holiday’.

Using NEAR to understand opinions 

If you wanted to go slightly more advanced you could look at how you break down a question/aim into a research question using the NEAR operator to help you deep dive into peoples’ personal opinions on topics, and help clean your data to focus more on real conversations. 

What do people think about climate change?

(((I OR we OR my OR myself) NEAR/3f

(think OR believe OR feel OR thought)) NEAR/7

("climate change" OR "global warming"))

‘What are the effects of climate change on people’s’ mental health?'

We isolate the key themes 'climate change' and 'mental health'

Expand on the terms

"climate change" OR "global warming" OR deforestation

"mental health" OR  anxiety OR wellbeing

Add brackets to our groups

("climate change" OR "global warming" OR deforestation)

("mental health" OR  anxiety OR wellbeing)

Then add our near operator

("climate change" OR "global warming" OR deforestation) NEAR/7

("mental health" OR  anxiety OR wellbeing)

Now we add one final set of brackets to group the whole thing together

(("climate change" OR "global warming" OR deforestation) NEAR/7

("mental health" OR  anxiety OR wellbeing))

You cannot use the AND operator in queries that include the NEAR operator. For example, the following query is not valid:

“Climate change” NEAR/10 (health AND stress)

However, the NEAR operator may be used to find a word or phrase within X number of words of anonther phrase. The following queries are valid:

(("climate change" OR deforestation) NEAR/7 ((mental NEAR/3f (health OR wellbeing)) OR stress OR anxiety)

NEAR with Japanese language (and other similar languages)

So when looking at the Japanese language, we divide Japanese text into single characters. That means that, when you're using operators like NEAR with Japanese, the number you use next to the operator will refer to the number of characters instead of words. So NEAR/10 will look for a phrase within 10 characters of another phrase.

Using NEAR/ to understand if there is media contained within posts

Community member @Mark Hammonds previously shared this tip:

As usual, you would have to accept some missed, some incorrect answers. I would recommend “iterating” the query to minimise these.

For example to find those with media, you could use in the initial query “bp Statistical Review” AND links:(viemo.com OR youtube.com).  You could also use  watch NEAR/5 video

For posters you could look for the word download NEAR/5“BP Statistical Review”

I would probably do an initial query, looking at a narrow set of sites like Twitter.  Then once I’d worked out there were some videos / posters.  I might refine the query link to the exact  document e.g. links:” https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2021-full-report.pdf”  and / or change text to download NEAR “BP Statistic*”. These could then be “tagged”  within  the query to distinguish them from those without.

Finding keywords mentioned multiple times

You can use the ~ to identify keywords used a specific amount of times. e.g.

“word word word”~5

Which would look for "word" being repeated 3 times within the space of 5 words.

You would change the number of times you repeat "word" in the brackets and the overall breadth of the search defined by the number after the ~.

So if you take a purchasing intent example such as: I tried Nestle white chocolate. You could do:

NEAR/5 (tried NEAR/5 (nestle NEAR/5 "white chocolate")) 

Or simplify using a proximity phrase e.g. "tried nestle white chocolate"~5.