Keyword Searches Flood News Alerts With Off-Topic Results, Taxonomy Filters Offer Fix
News desks relying on simple keyword queries to monitor industries are ingesting large volumes of irrelevant content, as terms like 'bank' or 'rock' match unrelated subjects such as rivers, geology, and crime stories. An analysis using Perigon's News API compared keyword and Google Content Category taxonomy filters over a one-month period ending July 2025. The data showed that a keyword search for 'bank' returned roughly 988,000 articles, while a taxonomy-based filter targeting the Finance/Banking branch returned around 363,000 more topically relevant results. Similarly, a keyword search for 'rock' pulled 341,000 articles versus 210,000 under the Rock Music taxonomy path, with the difference attributed to geology, sports, and idiom references. Editors are advised to select taxonomy or structured filters as a primary 'aboutness' filter before layering additional parameters like date ranges or source lists.
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