PharmaLiveSearch is different from any search engine you may have used in the past. Results are focused specifically on authoritative sources for the pharmaceutical professional. PharmaLiveSearch is aimed specifically at professionals in the pharmaceutical industry and provides several important refinements of the search process that are particularly relevant to pharmaceutical related searches.

Precision-Tuned Search

PharmaLiveSearch has three different search scopes from which to choose:

“Publisher Recommended Sites” designates a set of more than 25,000,000 documents from more than 2,600 domains and focuses on the most relevant pharmaceutical sites as chosen by the editors of Med Ad News, R&D Directions, and PharmaLive.com. As a result, spam and irrelevant documents have already been filtered.

“Search PharmaLive” provides the option to search results within the PharmaLive Website. You have the ability to search the PharmaLive News Release Archive, as well as the Med Ad News and R&D Directions magazine archives.

“Search Web” provides results beyond selected domains, but they are ranked for relevance and filtered for spam.

Within each scope you can search by categories, represented by tabs at the top of the search results. PharmaLiveSearch sorts results into different categories based on the type of information source.

Categories within the Publisher Recommended Sites include:

• Companies (results from the top pharmaceutical companies in the industry)
• Government (results from top drug sites)
• Research and Development (results from drug research organizations)
• Media (results from top journals and pharmaceutical publications)
• Associations (results from various health and medical related organizations)

The main results for your query are listed in the largest central window of the results page, ranked by relevance to the query and date published. A “P” symbol reflects that the information in the document is password protected and/or requires a subscription. You may need to register with the organization responsible for the Website to get full access to that document. A PDF symbol next to a result shows that page is available in Portable Document Format only.

Searches may return many results from the same domain or multiple copies of the same page (e.g., a widely posted press release). This is a result of crawling identical pages from several different locations, or there may be several versions of the same page that differ slightly.

PharmaLiveSearch filters duplicate records, therefore results initially reported will almost always be greater than the actual number available. To view all results including duplicates, go to the last search results page and click on the link at the bottom of the results.

PharmaLiveSearch is also unique in that it implements knowledge associated with the pharmaceutical industry. We recognize many industry-specific acronyms (e.g., “FDA”, “ALS”) and industry synonyms (e.g., “high blood pressure” and “hypertension”). We also recognize more general and specific concepts for many drugs and diseases (e.g., brand names or generic versions of many drugs). This knowledge is used to increase the accuracy of searches, improve displayed results, and retrieve more relevant results.

Other Features

For many queries a "broader term" / "narrower term" link appears at the top of the page. When we recognize concepts from a query, we'll provide the option to start a new search on a more specific or more general concept. Click on a term to launch a new search on that concept.

To the left of the main results, you will find a box marked “Related Concepts”. Click to find results related to the searched topic.

If there is a misspelled word in a query, a “Did You Mean” notation will appear under the line saying “Search Results For”. Click on the link to repeat the search with the alternative spelling.

If results note a “Search With This Meaning” link at the top of the page, it means that your query has more than one possible interpretation (e.g., queries with ambiguous terms).

For comments, questions, or suggestions concerning the relevance of particular search results, click the "Was This Helpful" link accompanying the result and your assessment can be quickly submitted.

The search page returns an RSS feed of recent articles about the pharmaceutical industry. These articles are direct feeds from a source and do not change in response to queries.

These are searches that return particularly interesting results and/or have appeared frequently.

These are highlighted links above your search results (e.g., “ALS”). These links are particularly relevant to certain queries.

Search Instructions

Operating PharmaLiveSearch is similar to the method used for other search engines. Below we discuss some tips for making your searches more effective.

For best results, your search terms should be as specific as possible. General terms will yield more results, but using more relevant words in a query will yield a smaller set of more relevant results.

Include only information relevant to your query. Be concise in phrasing and exclude common terms. Terms like form, set, and cut are examples of very common terms with many different meanings. Provide words that have a specific meaning and are related to the topic of interest. If necessary, use a phrase to clarify terms.

A Boolean query is a logical expression using parentheses, index terms, and the logical operators AND, OR, and NOT. Boolean operators and search parameters can be used to construct precise queries.

1. Relating multiple search terms with the “AND” operator: An “AND” operator will have the effect of treating the two expressions linked by “AND” distinctly and will look for documents that contain references to both. Note that the “AND” operator must be in upper case or otherwise the word “AND” will also be interpreted as a desired search term.
2. Relating multiple search terms with the “OR” operator: Relate two terms with the Boolean operator “OR” to get results containing at least one of the two search terms. This is useful when you are searching for information that meets one or another of two similar characteristics, either of which would be an acceptable result. Note that the “OR” operator must be in upper case.
3. Relating multiple search terms with the “NOT” operator: Using the logical “NOT” operator ensures that matching results do not contain the search term entered in the search field. This is useful when a variety of returns might be achieved, but one of them is not desired.
4. Using parentheses in queries: PharmaLiveSearch allows you to enter a query with several operators at the same time. Using parentheses, you can cause one operator to affect other operators. PharmaLiveSearch evaluates terms inside the parenthetical expressions before evaluating the terms on the outside and therefore weighs the innermost terms more heavily when returning results.
5. Considering word order in queries: PharmaLiveSearch weighs search parameters differently based on word order. A document is given a slightly higher relevancy if words are found in the document in the same order they are specified in the query.
6. Using double quotation marks to specify an exact phrase: Quotation marks can be used to specify an exact phrase. This is useful in producing results containing the exact terms specified. The specified terms will be adjacent and in the order specified.
7. Using the “d” operator to specify a domain: The “d” operator specifies a domain on which to restrict your search. This is helpful when you know exactly which Website your information will come from. An incomplete domain name can be entered to search a set of domains sharing the incomplete information entered.