Keywords or sectors: which to use

Use sectors for the broad picture and keywords for precision. Sectors cover everything in your industry, such as construction or healthcare. Keywords pick out the exact services you sell, such as "grounds maintenance" or "occupational therapy". Most businesses use both, and each is set in a different place.

Sectors: your whole industry

Sectors are the plain-English industry tiles you chose when you signed up. They set the starting view on Browse tenders, so you open it already looking at your own industry.

To change them:

1. Open Preferences in your account settings (the page is at /profile, on the Preferences tab).
2. Under Your sectors, tick or untick as many as you need. Changes save as you go.

On Browse tenders your sectors appear next to Filtered:. Select Change to return to this page. To look beyond them for a moment, select Clear filters.

Pick more than one sector if you do more than one thing. A wide set of sectors gives you a wide feed, so combine it with the other filters. See Search and filter live tenders.

Keywords: a specific service

Keywords are words you choose yourself. They live in two places:

• The search box on Browse tenders, for a one-off look.
• A saved search, which keeps your keywords working so you can check the matches at any time. See Manage your saved searches.

Each keyword stands on its own, so list short terms. Describe what you do, not the procurement route. "Web development", "document scanning" and "leadership development" work better than "framework" or "ITT".

Which should I use?

• You want to see everything in your industry: use sectors and keep your keywords for later.
• You sell one or two specific services: add those as keywords in a saved search, and keep your sectors on so Browse stays focused.
• You do several different things: create one saved search per specialism rather than one long list of keywords, so each set of matches stays easy to act on.
• You are getting too many results: use a more specific keyword, remove a broad one, or choose a buyer type. See Filter by buyer type.
• You are getting too few: try a broader keyword, add a neighbouring sector, or widen your regions.

Plans

Browsing by sector and searching by keyword are included on every plan. Free includes one saved search. Keyword alerts, meaning your saved-search matches emailed to you every day, are part of Pro. Free users still see their matches on the page and receive the weekly digest. See /pricing for details.

Good to know

• The buyer types you set in Preferences also apply to your keyword alerts and digest.
• You can change sectors, keywords and filters at any time. Nothing is locked in.