Using ScoopVault3 min read

Proximity search

A keyword search for 'fraud' returns every email mentioning fraud. A proximity search for 'fraud' within 5 words of 'payment' finds emails where those two concepts appear close together; such emails are far more likely to be investigatively significant.

How to use it

In the New Search page, find the Words Near Each Other section. Enter a First term, a Second term, and the Within (words) maximum word distance (default: 5).

Viewing proximity results

When a completed investigation has proximity criteria, a Proximity tab appears, showing matched emails (with count), a no-match notice, or an amber warning if criteria were saved but matching did not run.

For each match you see: email subject, sender, date, which field matched, words apart, and a context snippet. Click "View in Explore" to jump to that exact email.

How it works and what it covers

Google Vault doesn't support proximity searching natively, so ScoopVault performs it after retrieval: once the Vault export completes and the emails are ingested, every email in the investigation is scanned locally, and each match records the exact word distance, the field it matched in, and a context snippet. The matching is deterministic; 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.