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This question is both specific for your search and general for the industry.

Natural language is a technological concept in which a block of text (natural text) is being examined for its content automatically. A search is then conducted according to the results of the examination.

Keyword search is breakdown of any concept or idea into a set of keywords which are then used to perform a search in the existing knowledge databases. The keyword breakdown is best performed by a human who can apply logic to the process.

In general the concept of natural language search never really took off. There were some tries and there are a few systems that still claim to have such capability but it was never widely adopted by the industry. No government database provides natural language search capabilities and there is a need to relay on 3rd party sites to perform the analysis from the block of natural text to a searchable criterion.

Some IP professionals use natural search as a complimenting process to the traditional keyword search.

Another key point to consider is that using natural language search you are actually disclosing the new idea / patent to the search engine because you need to provide a text block that accurately describes it. Where is with keyword search the new idea / patent are only exposed to the person extracting the keywords and are not disclosed to any search engine, database or platform used to perform the search.

Patentest does not use natural language search because A) We do not expose our client’s confidential information to any 3rd party. B) Natural language search technologies are not mature enough to give better results.