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In Conversation Topics, how should I expect the "Keywords and phrases to track" feature to work? Phrases, in particular, don't appear to work as described.

 

I've found that if a phrase is added to this field, it will reliably include results that only feature one word within a phrase, rather than the whole phrase. In my attached screenshot you can see two phrases in the field "Home page" and "to do list". The volume of conversation results increased by an order of magnitude when I added "to do list" because it seems to include any conversation with the word "list."

 

Screen Shot 2021-04-14 at 4.31.06 PMAccording to the Help Center article, I'm under the impression it should only include conversations in which the words "to", "do", and "list" are all within three words of one another. Am I misapprehending how the Keywords and phrases feature works, or is this not working as expected?

Hey @ethan k​, let me check in with our team to get an idea of expected behaviour here, and I'll let you know as soon as I have an update.

Me again! If you include the phrase in quotation marks, the results will return the exact phrase.

 

Try searching for "to do list" instead of to do list and let me know if that does the trick!

Ah ok, I had tried it written out as "to do" list (which serves up the same results as no quotes). But hadn't tried "to do list" all together. That does serve up fewer results, which I think will be helpful! Thank you. "To Do" on its own is of course too broad, so I'd like it to include the word list in the phrase as well. But I think this will do for now.

 

Any idea why it doesn't entirely work properly without the quotes? Something about how short and general words like "to" and "do" are?

Not quite - it's moreso to do with the default logic that's applied depending on how you phrase your query. Entering a phrase without quotation marks applies an OR logic, so it searches for any single one of those words in your phrase. Putting it in quotation marks applies an AND logic.

It makes sense why the phrase "to do list" would work in quotes because it's searching for that exact phrase in that order. It doesn't follow logically to me that a phrase without quotation marks would apply OR logic. It seems that a phrase would be AND logic with or without quotes because otherwise what would be the difference between adding a phrase to this field versus just typing in all the words individually? Meaning, the individual to do list phrase should work as well, provided that the words "to" and "do" and "list" all appear up to 3 words apart (according to that article I linked to). In some other cases it does appear to work the way it is described in that article, but not always.

Hi there!

 

Did the logic change in Topics? Can I add sentences without quotation marks now and expect the exact same sentences to be tagged, or should I use quotation marks in order to ensure the “AND” logic applies? 

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