FAQ

We hope you are finding PRFilter easy and intuitive to use. However if you do have any questions, you might find the answer here.

What is PRFilter and how do I use it?

PRFilter from RealWire finds the press releases journalists and bloggers want to see. It provides one tool to efficiently find stories out of thousands it aggregates each day from the main paid newswires and selected company news feeds.

Its innovative, active interest technology (patent pending) can build a personalised profile of an individual’s interests from their own, or their publication's, published articles.

Releases from multiple distribution sources are collected, aggregated, matched and ranked against these profiles in near real-time.

Senders of releases benefit because their stories are likely to be seen by genuinely interested journalists or bloggers, rather than becoming lost in inboxes.

What sources of press releases are aggregated by PRFilter?

At the moment PRFilter aggregates ten key paid wire and press release distribution services and press releases direct from over 60 individual technology and media companies.

Together these sources output approximately 15,000 press releases each week. PRFilter is capable of aggregating more sources than these and is also capable of having releases submitted direct to it rather than harvesting the releases itself.

How do I use the search function?

Public users can search for relevant releases from the whole stream by just typing a search string into the search box. PRFilter will seek for exact phrase matches if you put your terms in quotes. PRFilter does not support other criteria such as Boolean rules at this stage.

You can use our Advanced option to limit the results to releases that relate to certain industries.

The results can be further filtered by time period or where they originated from geographically.

How does it rank the search results?

Results are ranked based on a combination of relevance to the terms searched for and the extent to which PRFilter matched a particular release to the profiles in its database. So the more people PRFilter thinks a release would be relevant to the higher it will be ranked.

What are "Most Relevant Stories" and how do you decide what to highlight?

Public users can also view our Most Relevant Stories categories to find releases that PRFilter thinks are the most likely to be of interest to someone with that focus.

Like the search results these are again ranked through a combination of match in terms of content to that particular area of interest and also the number of individual profiles the release was matched to.

What are personalised filters and how do I get one?

If you sign up for a personalised account you can use individual personalised filters to find the stories most relevant to you. For instance freelancers can have multiple filters to reflect the different topics about which they write.

The filters are initially based on either your own, or your publication’s, published articles or you can base the filter on one or more of our Most Relevant Stories categories.

PRFilter will then continue to learn and develop this filter through new articles that are produced and can also learn more through its feedback function by telling it whether some press releases are interesting to you or not.

To request a personalised filter account please request one here.

What are the geographic areas and how do I alter the ones that apply?

Releases are currently identified as either originating from UK & Eire, US, Canada or Unclassified. This is based on cities, states or countries that are mentioned at the beginning of a particular release. If no relevant place is stated that relates to the three specific geographic areas the release is left as unclassified.

This means that Unclassified releases include both releases from other areas such as mainland Europe and Asia as well as releases that don’t identify their origin.

To change the geographic areas simply select or deselect from the list shown.

There are no press releases in my viewing window. Why is it not working?

It is likely that the filter options that you are using are set so that no press releases meet your requirements. If you are using a personalised filter perhaps you have your relevance slider set at its highest threshold (so only very good matching releases will appear) and perhaps you are just looking at releases from the last 15 minutes? It could be that no press releases meet these strict criteria. Try altering the filter options to a longer time period and / or a lower match setting on your dial. If there are still no results, then please email us at feedback@prfilter.com and we will look into this for you.

The system is telling me that there are 23 matches meeting my criteria, (to the top right of the listing) but I can only see 10. What has happened?

The system automatically displays 10 results per page, but you will find the remainder of your results on the following pages. You can go on to these following pages by clicking on the numbered links at the bottom of the front / first page or you can change the number shown per page by changing the setting in "More Filters" on the left. 

How do I know what time period I am looking at results for?

The time periods are all shown at the top of your results list. By default PRFilter will show you the last 24 hours results. Just select another time period from the list shown to change this filter.

I will be working on a feature for the next few weeks. Can I save releases to refer to later?

Yes, you can save the text of the release onto Evernote or Instapaper. This can be done using the save button located just beneath the release you want to keep.

Can I share a release with a colleague?

Yes. Beside each press release you will find an email button , press this and use your email client to share the release.

What does the slider do? What does it mean? [Personalised accounts only]

The relevance slider is the tool in PRFilter which allows you to select how much relevance you want to see, or put another way, how much irrelevance you don’t want to see. When you set your slider to the left, this means that press releases have to match your PRFilter profile very well in order to be shown in the results page.

As you move the slider to the right your criteria for matching become less strict, and more press releases will appear. The further down the results page you go, the less well matched the press release is against your profile and in general, the less relevant they will be. This slider can be altered by you at any point in time. So if you are having a really busy day and only want to see releases which match your profile really well, you can move your slider towards the left. If on another day, you are looking for more stories to write about, then you can move your slider towards the right, stopping when you have sufficient interesting releases.

I have heard that PRFilter "learns", how do I teach it? [Personalised accounts only]

PRFilter has already read information about you so that it can work out what might be relevant or interesting to you. However, just like talking to another person, it can learn more about you if you tell it how interesting something is to you. Simply select from:

– release is sufficiently relevant and you would like more of these
– release is irrelevant and you would like less of these   

Please bear in mind that PRFilter will learn best if you give balanced feedback i.e. that you tell it which releases are both relevant and irrelevant.

Can I subscribe to my personalised results? [Personalised accounts only]

Yes. Click on the Subscribe option in the menu. Here you can configure an Alert relevancy threshold which should represent a level that you think gives an appropriate balance between focused results and covering your interests. You can then create an RSS feed based on this threshold which can be used in any RSS reader.

I can’t find the answers to my questions, who should I contact?

Our support team are on hand to help. Please email feedback@prfilter.com.

I know PRFilter is new and I have some ideas about some new functionality that would be really useful, who can I contact and will you do anything with my suggestions?

Thanks. We always really appreciate feedback. You can contact us by emailing feedback@prfilter.com.

Can I update my contact details on the system? [Personalised accounts only]

Yes. Once you are logged in, you will find a link at the top right hand corner of the screen "Settings" Click on this link to take you to your administration page. Make your changes and press save.

Can I report a problem I've found or make a suggestion?

Of course you can, simply complete the form below to tell us all about it:

Please be as descriptive as possible: