How to search for an exact phrase in news titles#

To match an exact phrase, wrap the whole title value in double quotes. On /v1/news/everything, title="Federal Reserve" returns only articles whose title contains that literal phrase — the words together, in order — instead of every article that happens to mention “federal” and “reserve” somewhere. The safest way to send a quoted phrase is with --data-urlencode, so the quotes survive the shell and URL encoding:

curl -G "https://api.apitube.io/v1/news/everything" \
  --data-urlencode 'title="Federal Reserve"' \
  --data-urlencode "api_key=YOUR_API_KEY"

You can send the key as a header (X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY) instead of the api_key parameter. The request above returns headlines that contain the exact phrase “Federal Reserve”.

What is the difference between quoted and unquoted title search?#

The quotes change how title is matched. Without them, the search is broad; with them, it is literal.

• Unquoted — title=Federal Reserve matches titles that contain both words as separate tokens, in any order and any position, and it also expands each word with synonyms and word-stems. A title like “Reserve currency and the federal budget” can match.
• Quoted — title="Federal Reserve" matches only titles where the phrase “federal reserve” appears as written, the words adjacent and in order. There is no synonym or stem expansion, so the match is much tighter.

Use unquoted search when you want reach, and an exact phrase when you want precision — proper names, institutions, product names or quotes where word order matters.

How does exact-phrase matching behave?#

An exact-phrase match is case-insensitive and looks for the phrase as a contiguous run of characters inside the title. “Federal Reserve” and “federal reserve” match the same articles; the order and adjacency of the words are required. Because there is no synonym or morphology expansion inside quotes, the phrase has to be present literally — a near-synonym or a different word ending will not match.

The phrase inside the quotes must be at least 3 characters long; a shorter phrase returns HTTP 400 with error ER0340 (an empty title="" is treated as an unquoted search, not an error). The whole title value, quotes included, is capped at 100 characters (ER0007). These limits apply to the quoted phrase only — the rest of your filters are unaffected.

How to combine an exact phrase with other filters and exclusions#

Exact-phrase search is just a title value, so every other filter still applies. Narrow a phrase by language, source or date, and remove unwanted articles with ignore.title, which drops any article whose title contains the given words:

curl -G "https://api.apitube.io/v1/news/everything" \
  --data-urlencode 'title="electric vehicle"' \
  --data-urlencode "language.code=en" \
  --data-urlencode "ignore.title=opinion,review" \
  --data-urlencode "api_key=YOUR_API_KEY"

This returns English headlines containing the exact phrase “electric vehicle” while excluding titles that mention “opinion” or “review”. To restrict the phrase to specific publishers, add a source filter; to remove terms, see how to exclude keywords or sources. If you need logic across several words rather than one fixed phrase, use the Boolean query language described in how to use AND, OR and NOT in news search. The canonical parameter list is in the official News API parameter reference.

Common Questions#

• Why does a quoted phrase return fewer results?
• Does exact-phrase search use synonyms or word stems?
• What length limits apply to a phrase?
• Does the phrase search the article body too?

Why does a quoted phrase return fewer results?#

A quoted phrase is stricter than the same words unquoted. Unquoted, title=Federal Reserve matches any title with both words in any order, plus synonym and stem variants. Quoted, title="Federal Reserve" requires the exact phrase, adjacent and in order, with no expansion — so it naturally returns a smaller, more precise set. If you are getting too few results, drop the quotes to widen the match.

Does exact-phrase search use synonyms or word stems?#

No. Inside quotes there is no synonym or morphology expansion: the phrase must appear literally in the title. This is the trade-off that makes phrase search precise. If you want variants — plurals, stems and synonyms — use an unquoted title value, which expands each word automatically.

What length limits apply to a phrase?#

The phrase between the quotes must be 3 to 200 characters, and a phrase shorter than that returns error ER0340. Separately, the entire title value, including the quote characters, must stay within 100 characters or you get error ER0007. In practice the 100-character cap on the whole value is the limit you will hit first for long phrases.

Does the phrase search the article body too?#

No. The title parameter — quoted or not — matches against the article title only. There is no synonym expansion inside quotes and no body-text matching here; phrase search is a title filter. To shape results further, combine it with filters such as language, source and date on the same /v1/news/everything request.