BillTrack50 Help Center

The Keywords column contains the most important words from the bill. Although these results aren’t completely perfect, as they’ll often list state names or other information you already know, they do reveal very helpful information, though, which can assist you in writing your queries and reviewing your results.

Adding Keywords to Your Bill Sheet

To start using the keywords column you’ll need to make it visible. Simply go to the account menu (your name in the top right) and choose Bill Sheet Templates:

Click the Edit button next to the template you are using. On the next screen check the box next to the KeywordList item to make it visible. You can also change the size of the keyword column at this point and reorder the columns using the cross on the left:

Then click the Save button at the top and you are done.

Depending on how you use the keywords, you might want to create a new template that has the Keywords List visible and wide, along with a few other helpful items, as a “research template”. That will let you switch your bill sheet to a research configuration while you are working on your search, and then back to your previewed reviewing configuration once you are ready to start reading bills. Remember you can switch which template you are using back and forth any time on the manage tab of the bill sheet.

Using Keywords to Expand your Search

When you are exploring a new topic area that you aren’t already familiar with, you may not know all of the language the different states might use around the topic. The keyword column can be a great help in identifying key words and phrases you might want to include in your query.

For example, if I want to find bills about artificial intelligence, I can start with just searching for "artificial intelligence". Look at the keywords in the initial search results:

Looking at both the name and generated keywords, we can identify a lot of other possible words and phrases to use: AI, deepfakes, user-generated content, computational processing, generative artificial intelligence and so on.

You can choose the phrases that seem relevant to what you want and use them to refine your search on the query tab; you can even just copy and paste, remembering to add quotes around phrases.

If you are trying to add these words to broaden your search make sure all the words and phrases are in the “any of” box. After you’ve added those words you can look at the keyword column again to see what new language has turned up. With a little back and forth you can see how you can quickly start to get the feel for what’s out there.