Keywords

Keywords match on submission titles, URLs, and comment bodies. They do not match on posters' usernames.

Special characters will try to match literally, including spaces and punctuation. F5Bot does not currently support fuzzy matching or Regex.

Matches are not case-sensitive.

See here for a full list of which sites are searched.

Matching Special Symbols

If you enter a match phrase such as *fish, then it will literally only match when it finds *fish. That is, it will not match unless an asterisk is found. It will not match starfish, red fish, or even just fish.

This applies to all symbols. If you use commas, periods, single-quotes, double-quotes, etc, then only expect a match when those symbols are actually found!

Boolean Logic

F5Bot does not support natural language boolean operators like "and", "or", "not" in your main keyword. Instead, keywords are matched exactly as entered.

If you enter the keyword fish and chips, F5Bot will only find the complete phrase fish and chips. It will not match fish chips, fishchips, or fish sticks and chips.

Similarly, if you enter the keyword fish not chips, F5Bot will only match when it finds the exact phrase fish not chips. It will not match on fish alone.

For true boolean logic functionality, users on paid plans can use advanced flags like exclude=, include-any=, and include-all=. See the Paid Features Documentation for details on boolean filtering capabilities.

Matching Only Whole Words

Example

Whole words onlyMatch only whole words or phrases.

If the "whole" flag is used, then F5Bot will only match on whole words or phrases. It will reject a partial match that doesn't end on a word boundary. The above example matches:

yes check mark Matchesno x mark Does Not Match
  • I ate an apple.
  • green apple
  • apple pie
  • applesauce
  • pineapple
  • grapple

If the "whole" flag is not used, then every example above matches.

Keywords of 3 characters or less must use the "whole" flag. Short keywords appear inside many longer words, so without the "whole" flag they would produce a flood of unwanted matches.

Flags

Example

Limit to sites
← Search all sites except Reddit.

Flags can allow you to filter out results that you may not be interested in.

You can use multiple flags by adding spaces between them. For a list of advanced flags available on paid plans, please see the Paid Features Documentation.

Example

Limit to sites
Skip URLs containing
Skip URLs containing

The above example will only check Reddit, but it will also skip links that contain "/r/python/" or "/r/ruby/". In practice, this means that it will skip the Python and Ruby subreddits.

Currently implemented flags are:

wholeMatch on whole words only.
no-redditWill not return results from Reddit.
no-hackernewsWill not return results from Hacker News.
no-lobstersWill not return results from Lobsters.
only-redditWill only return results from Reddit.
only-hackernewsWill only return results from Hacker News.
only-lobstersWill only return results from Lobsters.
no-commentsWill not return comments (only returns posts).
no-postsWill not return site posts (only returns comments).
no-url=XXXWill not return hits with URLs containing XXX.
only-url=XXXWill only return hits with URLs containing XXX.
allow-nsfwShow posts marked NSFW by Reddit.

If multiple `only-` flags are used, then it is considered a match even if only one of them matches. If multiple `no-` flags are used, then a match is rejected if even one of those flags matches.

AI Filtering

Looking for something more flexible than exact keyword matching? AI filtering matches content based on a natural language description of what you are looking for.