---
title: "Boolean Query Operators Guide, With Examples"
description: "Social listening queries filter relevant brand, product, industry, or consumer mentions from large volumes of online conversation, beginning with the research questions the analysis should answer. The guide explains Boolean operators including quotation marks for exact phrases, OR for alternatives, AND for context, NEAR/x for proximity, NOT for exclusions, wildcards for variations, and brackets for grouping. It recommends adding misspellings, hashtags, account handles, websites, and exclusions, then testing and adjusting the query while keeping its structure simple where possible. Brandwatch Consumer Research offers Boolean, non-Boolean, and blank query options, with editor validation and Iris AI suggestions for entities, keywords, hashtags, subreddits, and multilingual terms."
---

# Boolean Query Operators Guide, With Examples

[Brandwatch](https://yomu.fyi/company/brandwatch) · Mélanie Corolleur · Mar 4, 2025

**Type:** Tutorial

## Summary

Social listening queries filter relevant brand, product, industry, or consumer mentions from large volumes of online conversation, beginning with the research questions the analysis should answer. The guide explains Boolean operators including quotation marks for exact phrases, OR for alternatives, AND for context, NEAR/x for proximity, NOT for exclusions, wildcards for variations, and brackets for grouping. It recommends adding misspellings, hashtags, account handles, websites, and exclusions, then testing and adjusting the query while keeping its structure simple where possible. Brandwatch Consumer Research offers Boolean, non-Boolean, and blank query options, with editor validation and Iris AI suggestions for entities, keywords, hashtags, subreddits, and multilingual terms.

## Context

Social listening platforms collect large volumes of online mentions, many of which may be irrelevant to a brand, product, industry, campaign, or consumer-opinion analysis. The guide recommends defining the questions and use case first so the query covers the needed areas without becoming overly broad.

## Approach / What changed

The guide builds queries from keywords and Boolean operators, using exact phrases, alternatives, context terms, proximity limits, exclusions, wildcards, and brackets. It also describes Brandwatch Consumer Research options including non-Boolean searches, blank queries with filters, editor validation, and Iris AI suggestions for expanding query terms.

## Takeaways

- Quotation marks search for an exact multi-word phrase, while OR combines alternatives such as products, brand names, or misspellings.
- NEAR/x limits the maximum number of words between two terms; NEAR/10 is presented as an example for finding terms close together.
- Iris AI can suggest entities, related keywords, hashtags, subreddits, and multilingual terms to expand a query in Brandwatch Consumer Research.

**Tags:** [AI](https://yomu.fyi/topic/ai), [Search](https://yomu.fyi/topic/search)

- Source: [Brandwatch](https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/how-to-write-a-good-query)
- Source URL: https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/how-to-write-a-good-query
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-09-10T16:10:19.940Z

[Read original post](https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/how-to-write-a-good-query)