Program to Narrow Search Results

A

Arie

New Member
Whats up guys.

Would someone give me a little direction towards a software program for extracting specific criteria from search results?

I want to clear the terms BANK, INC., LENDING, CREDIT and others from the search results on the new york goverment website so that I only deal with private individuals and not banks or institutions with the recorded mortgages.

Here is the url... http://a836-acris.nyc.gov/Scripts/DocSearch.dll/DocType

What do you guys think? Thanks.
 
This is somewhat of a "half-way" solution, but I'm not sure if you can search as many document types as you would want.

From the link you gave us:
Click on their blue "search options" button.
Select the option "party name - search by party name" at the top.
Now, leave the "individual" section marked and for the last name, just enter a letter.
Make any other date, document type adjustments etc...
Clicking on search will now give you all the individuals whose name starts with that letter (or combination of letters you entered).

I still saw a couple of "banks" here and there and others that did not appear to be individuals, but maybe it still is a way of narrowing it down a bit.

Of course you would have to do this for each letter and that is a pain. I wish something else would come to mind, but I can't see how else to do it.

Doing a google search for that website with "minus" signs directly in front of the words you want to exclude and +signs in front of those you absolutely want to include unfortunately does not work.

Another pain-in-the-butt option would be to copy and paste the table into a database program like Microsoft Access and then filter your results in there. Depending on how many rows the table has, that might be worth trying or it might be way too tedious.

Try the "last name" search suggestion and let us know if that helps.
 
Well you can use the regular search engine and take out specofoc works you dont want.

If you were looking for a bank, and when you type it in you found a lot of BankofAmerica.com

You could always search for this...
Bank -Bankofamerica.com

You can do multiple subtractions, or additions like +news
This would list news on banks not of bankofamerica.com
 
Trizoy,
How does he take out specific words he doesn't want? That was my first thought, but I couldn't see how that website's search function would allow you to do that. It's not your average search type.
 
Thanks for the responses. PC Hobbyist... I tried what you recommended but I was really looking for personal names only for Party #2. I tried putting in one letter in the middle initial or first name and putting % in the others so it would just get personal names because if you just put a letter in the last name box it brings out LLC's and other entities.

Unfortunately... for some reason it searches perpetually when I tried it, I'm not sure if its because there is so much to search for or it just isn't working. In contrast... when I just put in a letter in the last name the search results come fairly quick with entities. What do you think? We're probably on the right track. :cool:
 
Well, here is a "semi"-solution

Hi Arie. Well I had another idea that seems to work the best so far, but is still not 100% ideal. The advantage is that it WILL give you only individuals, but the disadvantage is that it is probably excluding many individuals.

In the same "search by name" page that I told you earlier:

For the section "Individual" enter the following:
  • Last Name: enter a single letter
  • First name and middle initial: leave these totally blank
  • Suffix: enter either M or Mr or Mrs or Ms
  • Party type: select "party 2"
Date range: that one is up to you
county and document type: that one is up to you

This will basically search for individuals who have a suffix (either, Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. or M.) and that way all other entities are excluded. I tried using only M in hopes that it would catch all the suffixes that start with M, but it seemed to literally only find the ones that are only M. It looks like M or MR find the most results.

The problem with entering for example % is that this search engine will literally look for someone whose name starts with the percent sign (and well, not too many of us are hip on coming up with names like that). Anyway, in this case that does not work (nor do * signs).

I don't see any other way of getting what you want. You are dependent on how this search engine was built (which doesn't seem all that great to me) and on how the individuals are entered into the system (in other words as Mr. Bob Smith or just as Bob Smith).

Some searches were fast and others did take about a minute to complete - sometimes with no results.

Let me know how this works for you.
 
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