Keywords locate language. Criteria specify what must be true about a business. A search for a service term can discover candidates, but the page might belong to a supplier, a consultant, a customer or a company that mentions the service without delivering it. Discovery should therefore produce questions for qualification rather than silently answer them.
A criterion should state the required activity, accepted answers and evidence standard. It may be qualitative, but its interpretation needs to be consistent. This makes two companies comparable even when they use different vocabulary, while leaving a blank when the public record cannot support the conclusion.
What the options do
Keyword-led discovery
The researcher searches terms, synonyms and combinations to find relevant-looking pages or records. This is useful for learning vocabulary and expanding a population beyond known companies. Search ranking and wording shape the result, so the first visible companies should not be confused with the best acquisition candidates. A match establishes language overlap, not business-model fit.
Criteria-based screening
The team asks the same defined questions across candidates, with explicit exclusions and retained supporting passages. A company can be accepted, excluded or left unresolved depending on the evidence. The process takes more work than collecting search results, but makes it easier to see why the shortlist contains one company and not another with similar wording.
Compare the operating work
| Dimension | Keyword-led discovery | Criteria-based screening |
|---|---|---|
| Route to a conversation | Finds pages and possible candidates, not willing owners. | Produces reviewed candidates, not willing owners. |
| Population covered | Depends on vocabulary, indexing and search visibility. | Depends on the defined population and available evidence. |
| Evidence standard | A term match is a discovery clue. | A retained passage must support an accepted answer. |
| Cost drivers | Low initial search effort can create later review work. | Question design, collection and audit require deliberate effort. |
| Timing constraint | Initial results can appear before identity checks. | Useful screening waits for support or explicit gaps. |
| Exclusivity and competition | Other researchers can use the same terms. | The research standard creates no transaction exclusivity. |
| Control and responsibility | Search systems rank what is visible. | The buyer sets questions, exclusions and acceptance rules. |
When to choose each
Keyword-led discovery
Choose keyword discovery when the population is still forming or terminology varies across companies. Use several expressions and inspect the context around each result. Record the route by which candidates were found, and deliberately look for adjacent descriptions that a narrow phrase would miss. Hand the candidates to a separate qualification step before ranking them.
Criteria-based screening
Choose criteria screening when the team needs a defendable shortlist or approval for contact. Ask fatal exclusions early, define how unknown answers affect review and keep financial assumptions separate from observed capabilities. Revise a weak criterion explicitly when the evidence reveals ambiguity; do not let each researcher improvise a different rule in the background.
Common mistakes
- Treating a service mention as proof of delivery. Check what the company actually claims to provide and to whom.
- Using a score that rewards many easy fields while hiding one decisive unknown. Show evidence coverage separately from apparent fit.
- Changing the meaning of a criterion halfway through the list without revisiting earlier records. A comparable screen requires the same rules or visible differences in assessment dates and versions.
What the decision depends on
It depends on the stage: use keywords to discover, then criteria to qualify. They are complementary operations rather than rival search engines. Docket turns the client’s criteria into agent questions, collects typed answers with retained quotations and reviews their support separately. It cannot turn vague preferences into objective truth; the questions and accepted values need to be explicit enough for the client to review.
How to test the choice
Write down the current constraint before choosing a workflow: candidate coverage, evidence quality, access or the capacity to handle conversations. Compare alternatives against the same mandate and record the work needed to reach the same stage. A larger file, a delivered message and a held owner discussion are different outputs. Treat missing evidence and excluded records as part of the assessment rather than hiding them behind activity totals.
Start with a bounded review and examine the actual records. Ask which claims changed the decision, which questions stayed open and who must act next. Expand only when the handoff is workable. These comparisons are Docket’s qualitative assessments of operating methods, not performance benchmarks, promises of transactions or recommendations to acquire a business.
Discuss the research work your team needs or inspect the live demo before choosing a delivery approach.