Proximity search
Proximity search finds collected messages where two terms appear within a chosen number of words. It helps you focus a review without using AI or suggesting what a match means.
How to use it
Open Search this job in a completed investigation and choose Proximity. Enter a first term, a second term and the maximum distance between them. You can add up to five pairs and match any pair or all pairs.
You can also set proximity criteria on New Search. Those collection-time results remain available in Previous searches as At collection: proximity criteria from New Search.
Viewing proximity results
Each saved run shows the email subject, sender, date, matched field, words apart and context. Both terms are highlighted. Choose Open in Explore to review the source message.
Previous searches lists saved runs newest first. Opening one returns the result recorded at the time. It does not silently run the search again.
How it works and what it covers
Google Vault does not support proximity searching natively, so ScoopVault performs it after retrieval. Every collected email in the investigation is scanned locally, and each match records the word distance, matched field and context. The matching is deterministic and no AI is involved.
Proximity refines what was retrieved; it never broadens what Vault returns. The retrieval scope is set by your custodians, date range, and keywords. If you want proximity matching to cover an entire mailbox slice, scope the search by custodian and date range and leave keywords empty, or include one of the proximity terms as a keyword.
Search this job and Explore
Search this job offers Exact, Connected and Proximity modes over what has already been collected. Explore is for browsing, filtering and flagging the collected emails directly. These search modes are deterministic and use no AI.
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