Noise Words

Noise words are words that are used so commonly in text that they have been deemed non-searchable by the LexisNexis system. The list is too extensive to give here, but think of noise words generally as structural words that are used repeatedly in most writing, e.g. the, at, of, his, my; click here for more examples.

As with the vast majority of platforms, these words are “invisible” to the searching system. This means if you enter a search phrase, you might find in your results that some noise words have been inserted between them. Thus, a search for 'oil gas' for example, will actually find 'oil' and 'gas'. This also means when you are using proximity connectors (such as w/3), more words than expected can appear between your search terms. For example, when searching for 'apply w/3 bail' you may find more than three words appear between 'apply' and 'bail' in your results – this is because noise words don’t count towards proximity. This measurement of proximity actually reflects a more accurate assessment of semantic connection between the words.

One drawback is that certain very common words cannot be searched. For example, searching for 'do not call' (for news relating to the Do Not Call Register) results in a few articles about accident victims not calling the police (the word 'do' is ignored). In this instance, this problem can be resolved by searching for 'not call pre/1 register', or (even better) 'not call pre/1 regist! or list! or telemarketing or marketing'.

For more information please contact bac@lexisnexis.com.au.