Booleans also known as Queries or Search Terms refer to the combination of keywords you are looking to track across social media and other online sources. Social listening tools like Radarr by Genesys make sense of keywords through Operators. Creating effective Booleans involves using the right combination of operators along with a comprehensive set of search terms/keywords. 

To begin creating an effective Boolean/Query you need to identify the objective for your search and the kind of data you would like to track. 

Let’s define our purpose of tracking data. Let us assume we want to track the mentions around the car brand Jaguar.  

We might create Booleans that look like these: 

Simple Boolean Query  

“Jaguar” OR “#Jaguar” 

OR 
 

Advanced Boolean Query 

((“Jaguar” OR “#Jaguar” OR “@jaguar” OR “@jaguarsingapore” OR “#JaguarMena” OR “@JaguarMena”) NOT (“@MeetAnimals” OR “river safari” OR “riversafari” OR “@tiny_jaguar” OR “@Jaguarpawdj” OR “@jaguarpaw” OR “paw” OR “attacks” OR “mature” OR “cougar” OR “fishing” OR “skull” OR “@NatGeo” OR “#AtariJaguar” OR “@ChooseWild” OR “save Jaguar” OR “el jaguar” OR “@BiancaJaguar1” OR “@Jaguar_4_life” OR “@nedthetoothpic” OR animal)) 

The simple query is too broad and can capture too many irrelevant posts (as jaguar is also the name of an animal) whereas the advanced query will pull relevant results. It has been optimized and has a more comprehensive list of keywords/phrases/search terms that need to be included and excluded. 

The use of exclusions is not always necessary. But it helps to exclude the mentions which are not relevant to our purpose of tracking. 

Variations you need to look out for an ensure you are covering, include the following: 

• Slangs (Different ways of calling a brand/topic) 

• Translations in other languages for more coverage 

• Hashtag versions for your keywords (#ilovejaguar,#jaguarstories) 

• Social media handles (@jaguar – names of social media pages or accounts)