Best practices when searching for information on or about private companies in AlphaSense
When looking for information by or about private companies, you have a few options. Depending on exactly what you're looking for will determine which avenue is best for your research needs.
- Searching the private company in the Company & Ticker Search
- Searching the private company in the Keyword Search
- Searching for Trends Across Private Companies
Searching the private company in the Company & Ticker Search
The Company & Ticker Search on the right is used to search for a single or multiple private companies by their name. Use this search bar to finish the thought: “I want to see all documents either by or about [Company/Companies].”
This will result in all documents tagged to that company to be returned. This is the important distinction when searching private companies in the Company & Ticker search; you'll only see results where that company is tagged to the content itself. If you're finding that there aren't many results appearing, we'd recommend trying the next approach, searching the private company in the Keyword search.
Searching the private company in the Keyword Search
When comparing a search for a private company (ex: Stripe) in the Company & Ticker Search with the Keyword Search, you’ll likely receive different results because the Keyword Search will surface content that mentions Stripe, but might not be tagged to that organization.
The Keyword Search on the left is used to search a single or multiple topics, KPIs, or themes across AlphaSense (pair with the Company & Ticker Search to look at those KPIs or themes in relation to a Private Company).
It can also be leveraged to discover documents discussing Private Companies by searching the company name itself.
- For example, searching “Stripe Inc” will search for all documents that mention Stripe, Inc, even if the document isn’t tagged directly to Stripe. We recommend adding quotations around the company name to reduce the number of false positives.
- Searching Stripe or Stripe Inc (without quotations) will not only surface documents where the company Stripe is mentioned, but also surface other mentions, such as "stripe-rust resistance genes".
- Adding quotations and the business entity name (ex: Inc) will help reduce false positives
Searching for trends across private companies
Selectively search topics or themes across documents tagged to private companies by choosing the “Market Caps” filter and selecting “Not Publicly Traded”.
This is a great way to discover new and upcoming players within a given area of the market or to understand broad trends without a specific private company in mind.