Terms and Connectors Searching on WestlawNext v. Westlaw
If you type a terms and connectors search into the WestlawNext search box, you may not get the same results as doing the same search on Classic Westlaw. This is true if your search only includes the connectors: and, or, ” “. Why? WestlawNext applies WestSearch, not a Boolean search, and pulls up relevant documents according to the WestSearch algorithm. The algorithm adds synonyms to your Boolean search terms to broaden your search. It may exclude documents that appear in the classic Westlaw search because it does not pull up every document with the specified terms, as some of these may not be relevant under the WestSearch algorithm.
For example, the search:
“sexual battery” and “excited utterance”
in WestlawNext yields 52 cases when selecting Ohio as the jurisdiction, while Classic Westlaw yields only 30 cases. (more…)