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Getting Started with the AI Search Assistant
Getting Started with the AI Search Assistant

Learn how to use the Search Assistant, Meltwater's AI-powered chatbot in Explore, to help you with Boolean.

Cheyenne V. avatar
Written by Cheyenne V.
Updated yesterday

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AI Search Assistant Overview

The AI Search Assistant is an AI-powered chatbot customized with internal knowledge of the Meltwater Boolean language and associated operators. It helps generate brand and industry searches, expand or narrow searches, repair boolean errors, and even translate searches to other languages!

The AI Search Assistant simplifies the search query writing process for users of all levels, writing high-quality searches faster and with less hassle, leading to more accurate results and time for making data-driven decisions.

The AI Search Assistant tackles three general applications: generate, refine, and translate.

  • Generate

    • Create brand/industry search: build a brand/industry search based on related keywords and suggestions

    • Create a search from scratch: generate the first version of a Boolean search string based on the user’s input

  • Improve

    • Expand or narrow search: Take an existing search and add more topics to broaden or expand on a search string, or suggest additional operators to narrow results.

    • Review and repair: identify any syntax errors or areas for improving search quality

  • Translate

    • Translate search: translate search terms to another language

  • Batch Actions

    • List all searches that are labeled with the same label

    • Find searches with a similar topic and apply a label to all relevant searches

    • List the last five changes made to a search

    • Create three copies of a search: one that searches for results in Europe, one in North America, and one in Asia.

    • Rename existing searches

Accessing the AI Search Assistant

The AI Search Assistant is accessed from within Explore. It is available for all Explore users.

On the Meltwater Home Page, you will find a link to Explore in the banner and a card included in the More From Meltwater carousel on the right-hand side of your screen. Both take you to Explore, where you can launch the AI Assistant.

Meltwater Home Page

More From Meltwater Carousel

From Explore, the AI Search Assistant can be accessed in the following places:

  • Via the banner at the top of the page

  • From the Advanced Search page

  • Custom Category pop-up.

Explore Home Page

Advanced Search

You can also select the dropdown in Advanced Search and choose one of the available prompts directly from there.

Advanced Search Dropdown

Note: Meltwater users with a language other than English set as their default will not have immediate access to all prompts.

Custom Category

AI Search Assistant Home Page

The AI Search Assistant home page is broken into the following areas:

  1. Templated prompts - click to run one

  2. Chatbox - type your questions, requests, and more here

  3. Send message - click to send your responses to the search assistant. Alternatively, press enter to send.

  4. Provide feedback - The search assistant can make mistakes. Please let us know if it does via this feedback link.

  5. New chat - click to start a new chat and erase previous chat history

  6. Exit - close the AI Search Assistant

Using the AI Search Assistant

Creating a Brand Search (or any search)

Let’s say you need to monitor a brand like Rivian:

  1. You can type your request into the search bar in the Explore Home Page or you can open the AI Search Assistant with this button.

  2. The search assistant gives you a few options, such as building new and opening saved searches.

  3. Type Rivian and watch as it generates keyword options based on related terms and product categories.

  4. Choose the terms relevant to your focus - like Rivian’s products.

  5. The search assistant creates a draft query, which you can refine by adding or removing keywords directly in the chat.

  6. A live data preview appears on the right side of the screen, showing mentions and trends. Tell the search assistant how you want to adjust the query if something looks off, and the results update instantly.

Refining and QA the Data Preview

Now, it’s time to analyze the data preview:

  • If you want to look at a conversation trend over time, you can expand your search.

  • Modify the search content by asking the search assistant to suggest additional related terms or sources.

  • If any spikes or anomalies appear, hover over the preview to learn when the change occurred and ask the AI Search Assistant to explain the cause.

This real-time interaction ensures your search delivers the insights you need without flipping between interfaces.

Scaling with Bulk Actions

Next, let’s create and manage searches for five competitors.

  1. Ask the search assistant to generate brand searches for each competitor - you can name the competitors, or the AI Search Assistant can select them for you. These searches can be created one by one or all at once, saving you time.

  2. Not only can you create all searches at the same time, but you can save all five searches directly into Explore by asking the AI Search Assistant.

  3. Add a label so you can keep your searches organized. Apply a label to group these searches under Competitors for easy reference in dashboards and reports. These labels make collaboration and governance easier across teams.

Note: Alerts, dashboards, and reports can all be generated from these searches without additional boolean setup.

Search Assistant Capabilities

The assistant has many built-in capabilities to help with search creation.

If you start the assistant from Explore with an ad hoc or saved search in the editor, and ask the assistant to fix/edit/etc., your search will automatically copy your search from Explore directly into the assistant.

Below are some of the things that the Search Assistant can do for you:

Generate and Refine Boolean Searches

Have Search Assistant create a new search that includes only certain types of content

  • Help me create a boolean search for tweets about Tesla and the EV industry.

You can then ask to build upon the existing search and expand the terms:

  • Expand the query to include other EV manufacturers similar to Tesla, and leave the rest of the query intact.

To obtain better results and minimize the chances of errors, we recommend starting from a simple request and refining the query, one request at a time. It's best to avoid long and complex requests, and instead use simple sentence structures when interacting with the assistant.

For example, the following request asks too many things at once:

This may result in a search like the following which will not produce good results:

Try instead to use a refinement approach like the following:

Then progressively refine the search

  • e.g., limit it to certain outlet types

and finally, you can move on to ask to filter by specific sources.

Translate Searches

You can also use Search Assistant to translate searches. We recommend the following message template as it has been proven to produce good results.

  • Understand the intent behind the following Meltwater boolean search: `put your search here`. Translate common words (i.e., not brand nor proper names) into `put the language here` without changing the intent of the query. Never translate boolean operator names and connectors.

For example: the following is a query searching for baking-related terms around Allinson and King Arthur (baking brands). Notice how the assistant will not translate the brand names.

Explain Searches and Operators

The Search Assistant can also explain individual operators and even entire searches:

  • Explain what the `{operator here}` operator does and provide an example of how to use it.

  • Analyze the following boolean search `{search here}`. Think step by step and break it down into meaningful parts. Understand the intent behind the search and provide a brief but precise explanation of its intent.

Search Repair

The Search Assistant is capable of checking the syntax of a boolean search against Meltwater's search documentation and proposing fixes when the syntax is incorrect.

The following is an actual search from a client account which is meant to retrieve results mentioning "Pernaud Ricard" in conjunction with "Keep America Beautiful" to monitor the coverage of a partnership between the two brands.

  • (Keep America Beautiful) AND (Pernaud Ricard)

This query needs to be corrected since, as written, all terms will be individually searched (e.g. Pernaud OR Ricard) which returns 46k incorrect results instead of a few hundred correct ones.

Let's put it to the assistant with the following prompt:

  • Analyze the following boolean search: `{put the search here}` and check its syntax against Meltwater's Boolean Search syntax, operators, and accepted values using the retrieved documents. Think step by step to understand the intent behind the search and repair its syntax if necessary.

Language Support

The assistant can handle conversations in more than 90 languages. To use the assistant in a non-English language, simply start the conversation in the language of your choice.

Although the assistant is technically able to switch between languages, it is best to maintain the same language during the conversation to produce better results.

FAQs

Are the searches created with the assistant private?

Yes, your searches are private. We have agreements in place with both OpenAI and Azure (the underlying infrastructure) that all data sent to OpenAI or Azure will be encrypted at all times and will not be used for training OpenAI or Microsoft models. Meltwater, however, retains the ability to capture and use the searches for auditing and compliance purposes as well as to improve the experience for all our customers.

What knowledge has been provided to the Search Assistant?

The Search Assistant has the entire knowledge of GPT-4 but we have also provided it with knowledge of Meltwater's internal documentation for our boolean language syntax, associated operators, and other Meltwater technology to assist in the process of creating, explaining, and refining boolean searches. More precisely, the assistant knows:

  • what operators are available and how to use them

  • what (editorial and social) sources are available for search

  • common templates of searches for specific industries

  • how to expand and refine a Boolean search

  • how to check the syntax of a boolean search

  • how to translate search terms from one language to another without changing the intent of the query

Where does the Search Assistant code run?

The search assistant code runs in Microsoft Azure in an isolated and encrypted environment.

Why does the Assistant say that it can only help with Boolean searches?

Despite being powered by GPT-4, the assistant has been instructed to only help with tasks concerning boolean searches and Meltwater's technology.

Why would I use the Search Assistant instead of Chat-GPT?

The Search Assistant knows the details of Meltwater's boolean language, which are not available to Chat-GPT. Chat-GPT's knowledge quickly becomes out of date while the assistant will be kept up to date as new operators are added and others are removed. The Search Assistant has access to internal knowledge about search templates and special operators that are unavailable to Chat-GPT. In short, the Search Assistant should produce better, more valid boolean searches than the generic version of ChatGPT.

Another consideration is that when you use Chat-GPT on the web you are sharing your searches and your data with OpenAI which can (and will) then be used to train OpenAI models.

Known Limitations

There are some limitations you should be aware of when using the Search Assistant.

  • Hallucinations: Similar to Chat-GPT, our assistant may at times provide incorrect answers (the technical term is "hallucinate"). It may create syntactically incorrect answers (e.g., place parentheses in the wrong places or "invent" operators). Always check the generated searches against the Boolean Bible and the Help Center resources if your query does not work. You can also ask the Search Assistant to correct itself using the syntax repair prompt provided above.

  • Bouncing a request: The Search Assistant may wrongly reject a request if it believes it is not about boolean searches or Meltwater's technology. We will improve this behavior over time, but in the meantime try to rephrase your request to make it very clear it is related to boolean search creation.

  • Access to Knowledge Graph and Source Metadata: At the moment, the assistant does not know how to access Meltwater's Knowledge Graph, the source database, or the journalist database. These capabilities are planned but not yet implemented.

  • Response time: Due to the amount of knowledge it needs to access, processing your requests may take some time, please be patient while we improve its speed.

**Please report any bugs, incorrect answers, and hallucinations via the Feedback button available under the chat box so that we can improve the assistant.

💡 Tip

Need more help? Feel free to reach out to us via Live Chat or check out our Customer Community.

Find answers and get help from Meltwater Support and Community Experts.

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