Help: How to search using industries, verticals, and keywords

Overview

The Industries, Verticals, & Keywords field in screeners helps you narrow your search by industry, vertical, emerging space, or specific keywords of the companies you’re searching for. These categories allow you to explore company industry universes as broadly or specifically as you’d like. This article explains how to use this field and take advantage of its search logic to curate your search results.

Industries, Verticals, & Keywords field

You can search using the Industries, Verticals & Keywords field in various screeners, such as the Industry tab of the Companies & Deals Screener. You need to select the PitchBook option to expand the Industries, Verticals & Keywords.

You can use the Industries, Verticals & Keywords section in two ways:

1. The first method is by typing into the free-text field.
2. Once you’ve typed a term you’re interested in, select an option from the drop-down menu to choose which term you’d like to search by.
   
   • The drop-down menu also indicates whether the term is an industry, a vertical, an emerging space, or a keyword, and how many companies are tagged to that group. Many terms, such as “energy,” can be searched either as a keyword or as an industry or vertical.

You can also add relevant terms by using the Industries, Verticals, and Emerging Spaces checkboxes.

1. Underneath the free text field, you’ll find the Suggestions checkboxes.
   
   • These are automatically generated options that you can add to your search. These options are generated based on the criteria you select.
2. The Industries, Verticals & Emerging Spaces checkboxes, featured lower on the page, list all available industries, verticals, and emerging spaces. Use the “+” icon to expand areas and view more granular industries and categories.
3. Click the checkbox next to any term to add it to your search. Options already added to the free text box are automatically selected.

Alternatively, you can search by Global Equity Classification Structure
(GECS), Standard Industrial Classification (SIC), or North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). You can also select any of these options from the Industry tab.

• SIC is best for searching across regulatory filings and legacy databases.
• GECS works well for granular, modern industry segmentation within PitchBook, especially when sourcing deals in tech or niche verticals.
• NAICS is the standard used by US, Canadian, and Mexican government agencies. This option is a good choice when you need to cross-reference companies against government data, benchmark against public statistics, or align with filings that use NAICS codes rather than SIC or GECS.

You can find links to our articles covering the methodology and definitions for industries, verticals, emerging spaces, and keywords in the Helpful links section of this article.

Industries, Verticals, & Keywords search logic

The Industries, Verticals & Keywords field allows you to refine your search to tailor it to your needs. In this section, learn about the OR, AND, and Custom checkbox below, as well as other tips and tricks to be sure your search includes precisely what you’re looking for.

Using the OR, AND, and Custom logic selections

You can find the OR, AND, and Custom search logic checkboxes to the right of the Industries, Verticals & Keywords field. This field is defaulted to OR, but you can select the checkbox next to the option you’d like to choose. In the following sections, we explain the methodology behind each selection option.

Select the OR checkbox to combine all your search terms with “or.” This option is automatically selected when you open the Industries, Verticals & Keywords field. Use this mode to retrieve results containing at least one search term. This type of search yields the broadest set of results. The Venn diagram below depicts an example of “ride-sharing,” “cars,” and “bikes” being used as search terms with OR selected.

Click the AND checkbox to combine all your search terms with “and.” Use this mode to retrieve results containing every search term. This type of search yields the narrowest set of results. The Venn diagram below depicts an example of “ride-sharing,” “cars,” and “bikes” being used as search terms with AND selected.

For complete flexibility, select the Custom checkbox. This mode allows you to use any combination of Boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT) and parentheses. This is also known as “nesting.” Nesting is a powerful tool for constructing targeted queries and uses parentheses to group search terms. Use parentheses to separate keywords when using more than one operator and three or more keywords. Searches within parentheses are performed first. Outside parentheses, the search is read from left to right. Using parentheses can help you narrow your results.

For example, searching for: “Healthcare” AND “Gaming” OR “AdTech” retrieves results tagged to:

• Healthcare and Gaming and AdTech
• Healthcare and Gaming
• Healthcare and AdTech
• Gaming and AdTech
• AdTech

Use parentheses to make your results more specific. For example, instead of the above, you could search: “Healthcare” AND (“Gaming” OR “AdTech”). This retrieves results tagged to:

• Healthcare and Gaming
• Healthcare and AdTech
• Healthcare and Gaming and AdTech

Use “NOT” operators to exclude companies. Starting broad and excluding what you don’t want can be another helpful way of getting targeted results. For example, if you enter “ridesharing AND cars, NOT bikes,” your search results retrieve companies that contain ridesharing and cars but not bikes. Make sure to click the Custom search logic bubble to run searches that use multiple kinds of operators (such as when you use both “AND” and “NOT”).

Additional search tips

Keep the following tips and tricks in mind when curating your search:

Special characters can be used when using the AND, OR, and NOT search logic modes for more control over keywords.

Run a wildcard search to ensure the search results include all keyword variations. Include an asterisk (*) as the last character of the keyword and hit the “Return/Enter” key to add it. PitchBook’s search engine includes variations that match the letters before the asterisk but differ afterward. For example, if you type “rideshare*,” the search retrieves companies tagged with ridesharing, rideshare platform, for example. If plurals are the only variations you are concerned about, there is no need to use a wildcard, as the search engine includes plurals and other minor variations by default.

PitchBook’s search engine, by default, includes plurals and other minor variations for keyword terms. For example, searching “bike” automatically retrieves companies tagged with bikes. Place quotation marks around the keyword (i.e., by writing “bike”) to retrieve only exact matches and press the Return/Enter key.

Not sure exactly what keyword to use in your search? Check the Include related keywords checkbox. This broadens your search to include highly associated keywords. This helps you not miss any relevant results. When related keywords have been added to a term, the box surrounding it is blue, and the number of keywords added is indicated with a "+" and a number.

You can manually remove any keywords that don’t fit your search, and the algorithm learns from your choices to suggest better keywords in the future. To do so:

1. Hover over the keyword you’re searching for suggestions for.
2. A pop-up menu listing all the related keywords opens. Click the “x” icon across from the keyword(s) you want to remove from your search.
3. Alternatively, select Edit All Related Keywords at the bottom of the pop-up menu.

If your search includes industries, you have the option to select Search primary industry only. Because companies can be classified with multiple industries, this limits your results to companies that have a primary classification with the industry you select.

For example, if you enter the Software industry and select Search primary industry only, all of your results have a Primary Industry of Software. You won’t receive results that have a different primary industry, with Software as a secondary industry.

If you add more than one industry, you receive the additional option to select All Industries or one of your selected industries in this field:

• When you select All Industries, the primary industry of all companies in your search results must be one of the industries you have specified.
  
  • In the example below, if you select All Industries, all companies in your search results would have the primary industry of Software or Healthcare.
• When you select a single industry for Primary Industry Only, your results include companies that have either the primary industry you designate, or have one of your other industries as a primary or secondary industry. As a result, some companies have a primary industry that does not match any of your selected industries.
  
  • In the example below, if you select Software, all companies in your search results would either: (1) have the primary industry of Software or (2) have Healthcare Systems anywhere in their industry classifications. If you select Healthcare Systems, all companies in your search results would either: (1) have the primary industry of Healthcare or (2) have Software anywhere in their industry classifications.

Helpful links

• Emerging Spaces tool and methodology

To understand how this feature fits into a broader workflow, check out PitchBook Pioneer’s course – Financing your Startup.