New Company Filters, Simplified Alert Settings

Company Filters for SEC

Full-text search often does a good job finding references buried deep in complex documents like SEC filings. A search for Microsoft for example, includes SEC filings made by Barnes & Noble as well as Yahoo. These cross-company references are often interesting, as a Geekwire article Microsoft and Yahoo add new escape clause to search agreement demonstrates. We now display company entity filters for SEC in the search sidebar, with counts, which are useful for navigating to these filings.

Company filters can also be used to increase the accuracy of certain queries. For example the text search Apple Inc will also return SEC filings for “Apple Hospitality REIT, Inc.” the fund, since all search terms occur in the later. Select the APPLE INC filter to restrict results to just the computer company. Like all other search features, you can save a search with a company filter selected and narrow down alerts.

We are also working to extend this feature to company entities unified across all sources.

Simplified Alerts

Previously we supported a few coarse options that influenced both the timing and frequency of alert delivery for a particular saved search. By indicating that you wanted fewer individual alerts (i.e. “In the morning”), we also reliably delayed when you would receive the alert. We’ve simplified these settings down to a single slider for the maximum number of emails to send per day. Now if you select for example 4 emails per day, we can alert you immediately when there is a new document and within the constraints of the daily rate.

Now we avoid sending alerts late at night when you select fewer than 5 alerts per day. In the future we will add a separate account setting where you can indicate acceptable hours during which we can send you alerts, and/or to select a temporary vacation mode.

Other Improvements

We’ve improved the sidebar ergonomics to include a graduated listing (“view more”) when you have many saved searches. Saved searches are displayed in order of the most recently used, active search at the top. For mobile users, the sidebar becomes a pullout, to maximize display utility.

Finally, we’ve made some improvements to the account registration process.

Let us know what you think of these new improvements, and keep the ideas coming for new features!