I was recently performing some searches on Bing and came across something curious that I had never noticed before.

I’m not exactly sure if what I found is new or simply something I’ve overlooked in the past. I updated Twitter with “Did you know that Bing supports the + query modifier?” on November 10th, wondering if it was something that other people knew about.

I only received a few responses, including a couple from noted sourcing luminaries, and the consensus was that I didn’t find anything because it wasn’t documented anywhere and they could not get it to work.

However, the +/Plus sign does in fact work when searching Bing – just not like it used to in Google.

It’s always a little exciting to think you are one of the first people to stumble across something most people don’t know about, although I won’t get my hopes up that I’m the only person outside of some folks at Microsoft who’s ever figured out that Bing supports the +/Plus sign in searches.

This discovery also led me to proof of Bing leveraging semantic and phonetic search. 

Bing Search Supports the +/Plus Sign

So I was tinkering around on Bing testing very basic LinkedIn X-Ray searches (more on that later), and here’s my original Bing search of LinkedIn: site:linkedin.com “location Houston” java

Here are the results I found – notice anything odd?

I immediately noticed that the 3rd, 4th, and 5th results highlighted keyword hits of “Coffee.”

My first response was confusion – I could not recall Bing ever trying to so obviously perform semantic search and attempt to guess what I might be looking for by returning results with related terms I didn’t actually search for.

Then I scanned back up the page and noticed something similar to what I see on Google all the time, typically when Google thinks I might have misspelled something:

When I clicked on “Do you want results for site:linkedin.com “location Houston java,” this is what I saw:

The first thing I noticed was the +/Plus sign.

I could not recall ever seeing it before when searching Bing.

Then I looked at the results, and it was obvious that the +/Plus sign was serving to remove Bing’s attempt at semantic search and only return results with the exact terms I searched for.

No more results mentioning “coffee” when I was searching for Java.

If you think my observation of the +/Plus sign was a fluke, the very next day I was helping one of my associates with a search and noticed he used “HSCM” in an OR statement for a PeopleSoft FSCM position. I had never encountered HSCM before on a resume making reference to anything PeopleSoft SCM related, so I Binged it.

My search was simply PeopleSoft HSCM.

When I saw the results, I noticed the “Including results for peoplesoft hcm,” even though I searched for HSCM.

In this case, I don’t think Bing was trying to perform semantic search and return a related search term – I think Bing was actually steering me towards a spelling variant that is more common to Bing’s index, perhaps assuming that I misspelled the term in my original search.

When I clicked on “Do you want results for PeopleSoft HSCM,” there were only 31 results, and the +/Plus sign was there, preceding the search string:

If you try the same search on Google, Google doesn’t give you the benefit of the doubt and simply assumes you misspelled your search term and gives you results for what Google assumes you were searching for.

How rude.

I know it’s a stretch, but there are some people who actually do know what they are searching for and would rather not have their searches hijacked.

Bing vs. Google

I was a very early adpoter of Google’s search engine (think 1998), preferring it over what most “power searchers” were using back then (think AltaVista).

For many years I was a Google extremist – I used Google search for literally all of my searching needs and never bothered to search using any other Internet search engine except for experimental poking around.

However, not too long ago, after getting frustrated with the junk Google was returning in my LinkedIn searches as well as Google more frequently questioning my humanity by forcing me to jump through CAPTCHA hoops , my experimental poking around with Bing got more serious.

At this time, I use Bing more than I use Google – I’d estimate a 60/40 split.

Part of this is driven by the fact that I find Bing X-Ray searches of LinkedIn are so much “cleaner” and not subject to as much “noise” as Google search results. I also find searching for LinkedIn profile headline phrases in Bing to do a very good job of returning the profile I’m looking for, even if I don’t use the site: command to specifically search LinkedIn.

And of course I love the fact that Bing supports configurable proximity with the NEAR:X search functionality, allowing me to perform feats of magic and semantic search at the sentence level.

I also like the fact that, as I showed above, Bing will by default include your search terms along with results of terms it thinks you might find relevant.

With similar searches, Google just assumes you don’t really know what you were searching for and gives you results of what it thinks you were searching for.

And if you happen to be searching for flights, Bing’s Price Predictor totally rocks!

Unrelated to sourcing and recruiting, I know – but a gem nonetheless!

Bing Searchers Beware of Semantic and Phonetic Search

Now that I am on the lookout for Bing’s semantic search, I’ve noticed that sometimes Bing will slip in semantic search results without giving you the “Including results for ____ / Do you want results for _____” heads-up that lets you know Bing has included results with terms you didn’t actually search for that Bing thinks is related and relevant.

For example, here are the first page search results for a Java search that returns “Coffee” and more interestingly “Coffey” – which means that Bing is not only going semantic by returning words that may have a similar meaning in certain contexts, but also phonetic, returning words that sound similar to the search term.

If you explore the cached page for the Coffey result, you will notice that there isn’t any mention of Java anywhere, so the only thing I can conclude is that Bing took my search term of Java and leveraged semantics to also search for coffee as well as phonetic variants, such as Coffey.

I know there have to be a few fellow search geeks that find that prospect to be quite interesting. It looks like the folks behind Bing search have been busy!

In any event, the real lesson here is that Bing didn’t give me a heads-up that it decided to also return results with terms I didn’t actually search for.

So, if you’re using Bing to search for anything and you don’t want it taking any liberties with semantic search because you only want results with the exact search terms you used, be sure to add a +/Plus sign to the beginning of your search, like so:

11/13/11 Note: I’ve provided some updated LinkedIn X-Ray search string syntax examples at the end of this post.

I recently received a message via LinkedIn from Gary Cozin, an accomplished, well known player and knowledge sharer in sourcing circles, asking me a question:

“You know when we xray Google for LI profiles we can insert “current * financial advisor” in our string to bring back ‘current’ job titles we want. Do you know how would that be done in Bing?

Now, I have been a long-time user of Google for X-Ray searching LinkedIn. However, Google’s recently made some changes to the way LinkedIn X-Ray search results are returned that has made sourcers and recruiters add additional terms to X-Ray strings to an already lengthy search string to return only profiles (e.g., -inurl:dir, -inurl:jobs…).

Not long after Google made those changes, Shally Steckerl posted an article detailing a novel approach to X-Ray searching LinkedIn using the phrase “Public profile powered by,” which seemed to allow searchers to not have to resort to the cumbersome (inurl:in OR inurl:pub) -intitle:directory -inurl:dir -inurl:jobs, etc. search syntax.

While that approach definitely works, Irina Shamaeva and I have found it doesn’t seem to find and return all available results. Even so, there is no denying that it is a much simpler (and shorter!) method for finding LinkedIn profiles via Internet search engines. Why unnecessarily over-complicate search strings?

So, with Google’s recent changes coupled with their annoyingly overzealous blocking of more complex searches (in some cases you don’t even get a chance to use a CAPTCHA to prove you’re human!), I was happy and curious to see if there was in fact a way to accomplish what Gary was looking to do using a search engine other than Google.

My First Bing Current Title X-Ray Search Experiment

When using Google to search LinkedIn to find people with specific current titles, this is the area of LinkedIn profiles people target:

With Google, you can leverage the asterisk (single or multiple word wildcard) to “bridge the gap” between the word Current and the Title, because you can’t actually search for the bullet separating the two For example, “current * financial advisor.”

Bing and Yahoo (which uses Bing’s search) don’t have a similar operator or functionality. However, I was curious to see what Bing would do if I simply searched for the phrase “Current Financial Advisor:”

site:linkedin.com “current financial advisor” “greater new york city area” “public profile powered by”

A little over 1100 results, and they look clean (profiles only) and accurate to me:

When you click on a cached result, you can see our current title phrase search is working, despite the bullet separating the word “Current” and “Financial Advisor:”

It is important to note that if you click through the results, out to page 17 for example, you’ll notice Bing drops the estimated number of results from over 1100 down to 373.

Although the results look good, my sourcing sixth sense is telling me that we’re not seeing all of the available results.

Deeper Down the Bing X-Ray Rabbit Hole

Trying to think of another angle to take, I took a closer look at the structure of the LinkedIn profile.

I noticed that title phrases are always in the format of “TITLE at COMPANY.” In the above screenshot, it’s “Financial Advisor at Wachovia.”

Because of this consistency, I thought I would try dropping the search for the term “current” altogether and isolate and target “Financial Advisor at”

site:linkedin.com “financial advisor at” “greater new york city area” “public profile powered by”

Over 2000 results, and they look accurate and clean (profiles only):

Checking out a cached result verifies it’s working they way I wanted it to:

If you click through the results of this search, you’ll notice the total number of results drops from an initially estimated 2000+ down to 728, but that is still nearly double the number of real results returned by the “Current Financial Advisor” search. Turns out my sourcing sixth sense was right.

All is Not Perfect (or Current)

Dropping the word “current” from the search string and simply targeting the phrase “TITLE at” works, and it works especially well in the above example. Even though every single one of the random samples I viewed from the 728 results from the [site:linkedin.com "financial advisor at" "greater new york city area" "public profile powered by"] search appeared to be profiles of people who are currently financial advisors, dropping “current” from the search string and strategy doesn’t always work so well.

For example, when you run this string on Bing…

site:linkedin.com “branch manager at bank of america” “greater new york city area” “public profile powered by”

… some results are of people who state they are currently a Branch Manager at Bank of America, but other results are returned of people who are currently doing something else, but had previously been a branch manager at Bank of America.

This is bound to happen given that we are no longer forcing the word “current” to be in a phrase along with the title we’re targeting. However, in some cases, as with the financial advisor search, this search approach can yield results with nearly all profiles having the target title as a current title.

One of the reasons for this is actually due to the fact that a great number of LinkedIn profiles are not very rich in content or complete. Many people join LinkedIn, add their current position, and then don’t ever modify it – this results in many searchable profiles for which there is only a current job, because no previous jobs were ever entered.

This is one small way in which LinkedIn’s often shallow data and many incomplete profiles actually works in your favor – if you’re trying to target people by current title and want to find the maximum number of available results without having to be limited by trying to use “current TITLE” in your strings.

What’s the Shortest Effective X-Ray String?

Looking at the “Public profile powered by” phrase in the search strings, I was curious to see if the entire phrase was even necessary to get good results.

I shaved the “public profile powered by” all the way down to just “powered.” It seems like the most unique term and unlikely to produce (m)any false positives.

site:linkedin.com “financial advisor at” “greater new york city area” powered

Over 42,000 estimated results.

-

That’s a lot of results – certainly more than the two previous searches. Of course, the 42,000+ is just an estimate and we can’t see past 1,000 results – but I decided to check the integrity of the results out to the maximum you can view (1,000).

As you can see from the image below, you can actually view 1,000 results, and impressively, most (but certainly not all) of the results appear to be all  profiles of people who are currently financial advisors – even out to the last page. That’s a significant improvement from my previous best Bing search which yielded 728 financial advisors.

Sweet.

As Irina Shamaeva has speculated, the Internet search engines obviously don’t index every element/word/phrase of LinkedIn profiles. However, it does appear that the word “powered” is indexed more than the entire phrase “public profile powered by.”

Is there a more simple and elegant search string structure for searching LinkedIn via an Internet search engine to find as many public profiles as possible than site:linkedin.com “TITLE/KEYWORD” “LOCATION PHRASE” powered? If so – please let me know!

Is Google Down and Out?

Going back to Google, we can use a “standard” LinkedIn X-Ray string to compare results with the above Bing search for the exact same parameters:

site:linkedin.com (inurl:in OR inurl:pub) -intitle:directory -inurl:dir -inurl:jobs “greater new york city area” “current * financial advisor”

1600 estimated results looks good, right?

Not so fast.

Notice the 4th result, Shannon Sweeney? He’s not currently a financial advisor:

Using the asterisk in the phrase “current * financial advisor” is not a flawless solution – it will yield false positive results.

Also, navigating through the results, you can see that they actually end at 479. Less than half of our short and sweet Bing X-Ray search of LinkedIn. Interesting, yes?

Can Google Return Good Results with a Short LinkedIn X-Ray String?

Then I was curious to see what Google would make of the short and sweet Bing LinkedIn X-Ray search string:

site:linkedin.com “financial advisor at” “greater new york city” powered

While Google estimates over 94,000 results – you can see from the first 10 that they are mostly directory results and not profiles. Blech!

To add insult to injury, if you navigate out to page 46 – there are actually only 457 results, which is less than half of what Bing returns (which are all profiles and not directory results!).

The Coup de Grace

And now, for my finishing move, I will unveil one of Bing’s (no longer) secret weapons – <insert dramatic music>- proximity search.

Irina brought to my attention via Twitter that Bing actually supports the near: operator. I wasn’t previously aware of this, as I haven’t historically used Bing that much (sorry MS folks), and I had never before heard of Bing supporting proximity search.

A quick bit of research returned this information directly from Microsoft, showing that the near: operator “constrains the distance between terms so that documents that contain instances of the specified terms within ten words of each other are returned before those that don’t.” Interestingly and importantly, that explanation technically leaves Bing the option to return some results in which the near: operator is not strictly obeyed.

Additionally, Bing gives you the ability to move beyond fixed proximity (i.e., near: = within 10 words) and into the realm of configurable proximity by adding a number to the operator, taking precise control over the distance. For example:  java near:4 develop

It is also important to know that the order of the terms when using the near: operator is also considered when Bing ranks results. In the above example, pages that contain “develop” 4 words or less after “java” would receive a greater boost in rank than pages in which “java” appears 4 words or less after “develop.” However, depending on the rest of the query, this does not necessarily mean that the former would be ranked higher than the latter.

In other words, Bing favors the original order of the query terms over the reversed order.

So why is this all a big deal?

Well, using Bing’s proximity search effectively allows you to target the current title “phrase” found in LinkedIn profiles, and this is a “cleaner” approach than using Google’s one-or-more-word wildcard asterisk. For example:

site:linkedin.com current near:2 “financial advisor” “greater new york city area” powered

Unlike all of my previous search experiments, we can be more assured that the results are going to adhere to the intent of the search, which is finding the phrase “Financial Advisor” precisely within 2 or fewer words of “Current.” Now, we know that there aren’t any words that separate these two on the LinkedIn profile – its actually a bullet, but this proximity search can be nearly guaranteed to return results where the current title phrase we’re targeting is intact.

Interestingly, even though Bing estimates over 1900 results, when you navigate through the results, you end at page 41 with 410 results. While that is more real results than my first “current financial advisor” search that returned 373, it is less than some of my other search experiments above.

I have my theories as to why this is the case, but I am curious to know what your thoughts are.

If you were curious (I was), here is the search narrowing the distance down to 1 word between the word “current” and “financial advisor:”

site:linkedin.com current near:1 “financial advisor” “greater new york city area” powered

361 real results.

LinkedIn X-Ray Search Summary

• Using Google to X-Ray LinkedIn and target current titles with the “current * TITLE” phrase isn’t foolproof. It will return some accurate results, but it does not return ALL available results, nor are all of the results accurate (current titles).
• You can use Bing or Yahoo to simply search for “current TITLE” and you will return some accurate results. As with Google, however, it will not find ALL available results. Unlike using Google’s “current * TITLE” search technique, all of the results will all be of people with the targeted current title.
• Using Bing to search LinkedIn with the phrase “TITLE at” is also an effective way of targeting current titles without being limited to searching for the word “current,” although it can also return some false positive results (past titles) as well.
• The shortest and most effective LinkedIn X-Ray string to find as many public profiles in a particular metro area as possible appears to be this string structure on Bing or Yahoo: site:linkedin.com “LOCATION PHRASE” “TITLE/KEYWORDS” Powered
• You can leverage Bing’s support of proximity search to target the current title phrase:  site:linkedin.com current near:1 “financial advisor” “greater new york city area” powered
• Being curious, questioning status quo and always asking, “I wonder what will happen if…” are critical keys to discovery and innovation!

Conclusion

Bing/Yahoo 1, Google 0.

From my testing, it appears that you can forsake Google and confidently use Bing (or Yahoo) for nearly all of your LinkedIn X-Ray searching needs. It certainly seems that Bing allows you to find a higher quantity of higher quality results, and you can get them with very short and effective search strings, as well as through the use of configurable proximity search, all without all of the non-profile results that Google returns and the annoying CAPTCHAs/you’re not human insults.

Which leaves me wondering – what is going on with Google’s search engine that causes it to return such garbage (non-profile) results when searching LinkedIn?

As a final note – I would never suggest using only one Internet search engine for all of your searching, for obvious reasons. Having said that, Bing has now become my search engine of choice for sourcing and recruiting research.

11/13/11 LinkedIn X-Ray Search Syntax Update 

I’ve received some comments about 1 year after writing this post and there have been some changes and discoveries with regard to using Bing and Google to X-Ray search LinkedIn to find public profiles.

As such, here are a couple of examples of updated X-Ray search string syntax – substitute your location phrase and use your own keywords/titles:

Updated Bing LinkedIn X-Ray Search Syntax/Format

site:linkedin.com java “project manager” “location greater new york city area” -dir

Updated Google LinkedIn X-Ray Search Syntax/Format

site:linkedin.com java “project manager” “location * greater new york city area” “contact settings”

When you’re searching the Internet for potential candidates, it’s quite common (and practical) to search for resumes of  people who are likely to be local to your opportunity. The two main ways of doing this are searching by area code and searching by zip code range.

While there are limitations of both approaches (not everyone includes a phone number or address), in this post I want to explore an interesting phenomenon that was brought to my attention not too long ago which clearly demonstrates that even when people DO provide a phone number or address, you may not be able to find them by searching for that information.

Yes, you read that right.

Recently I had a recruiter in my network ask me why he could find a specific resume online using Google, but when he added the area code (which was clearly on the resume) to the search string – the search result disappeared.

When he sent me the screen shots, I investigated – and sure enough, he was right.

What I find especially interesting is the fact that he found the resume at all, because he wasn’t using any location criteria in his search to try and find local people. If his initial searches tried to target local people using an area code or zip code range, he would have never found the resume in the first place.

Moreover – he would never know of it’s existence.

Click on the image below to watch a short video clip of the Google resume search phenomenon:

Fascinating and Frightening

Seeing something like this makes me wonder how many people have resumes and other information online that are indexed by search engines, but are never found due to the search criteria used.

My instincts tell me there are many – but the insidious nature of searching is that all searches “work.” In other words – you get results from your searches, which gives you a false sense of security (and perhaps accomplishment), but you’re not aware of available results that your searches simply didn’t return. You can’t be.

In fact, it never occurs to most people to even wonder about available results they have access to, but are never retrieved.

However, just because you don’t find something – does that mean it doesn’t exist?

Why Does Google Fail to “Find” the Search Result?

I have my ideas as to why that specific resume cannot be found when adding the area code to the search, but I am curious to know your thoughts.

Multiple Search Engines

Of course, you should always employ difference search engines, as they don’t all index the exact same pages/sites. And even of they did index the same pages/sites, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they would return the exact same results for any particular search.

For example, while Google, Bing and Yahoo can find the same result without the area code, only Bing and Yahoo find the result that Google fails to return when adding the area code to the search string.

Beware!

I bring this example to your attention because you should always be aware of the fact that you may have access to people that you simply cannot find using certain search criteria, and it’s not limited only to location searching. Searching by skill, title, company, industry, etc., can be similarly affected.

It’s often simply impractical to NOT search with some location criteria – few people have the time to sort through and review results from all over the world that they cannot use. And location-focused searching doesn’t just apply to resume search, but also for any kind of searching in which you are trying to find people that live relatively close to where the opportunity you are sourcing/recruiting for is located.

Hopefully this post makes you think twice about your strategy and tactics to try and identify local people and helps you uncover previously “unfindable” results.

When it comes to searching LinkedIn using Internet search engines such as Google or Yahoo, there are many different ways to construct your search string (“X-Ray” or otherwise) and get results.

Ultimately, the goal of any good sourcer or recruiter is to find all of the best available potential candidates that a particular source has to offer.

A short while ago, Gary Cozin sent me a link to an article recommending to “forget complex Boolean strings” when searching LinkedIn using Internet search engines.

I read the article and appreciated the advice to go with the easier, simpler, more elegant search solutions, as well as the suggestion to try “Public profile powered by.” I had never thought of taking that approach – but more on that later.

First, a Little X-Ray History

If you do some research online, you’ll find that the LinkedIn X-Ray search strings that experts in the industry were recommending for years looked something like this:

site:www.linkedin.com intitle:linkedin “current * test manager” -intitle:answers -intitle:updated -intitle:blog -intitle:directory -inurl:jobs -inurl:megite.com -intitle:profile -inurl:jobid

That string has 8 exclusions – effective, but far from simple and elegant.

A while ago, I came up with and recommended a simpler, more elegant approach to the LinkedIn X-Ray search that focused on inclusion rather than a long list of exclusions by specifically targeting profiles using (inurl:in OR inurl:pub), which allowed me to get away with only using 1 exclusion: -intitle:directory.

This approach yielded a simple, short and effective “core” X-Ray syntax of:

site:linkedin.com (inurl:in OR inurl:pub) -intitle:directory

Short and sexy, right?

And Then….

Sometime in April, many people (including myself) noticed that when running a “standard” LinkedIn X-Ray string with Google, that rather than returning the familiar results of individual LinkedIn profiles, results would come back organized by first or last name. Additionally, many noticed that jobs would come up at the top of the results.

I checked into the matter and suggested to add a couple of exclusions, in the form of -inurl:dir -inurl:jobs to get back to the desired results of individual LinkedIn profiles.

That worked, but my simple, short and effective “core” X-Ray syntax of site:linkedin.com (inurl:in OR inurl:pub) -intitle:directory got a little longer and uglier with the addition of -inurl:dir -inurl:jobs. I wasn’t particularly happy about that, but it seemed the only way to get rid of the new garbage, non-individual profile, results.

However, it’s still shorter and more elegant than the X-Rays of yore with massive multiple exclusions.

A New Approach

Going back to the idea of using “Public profile powered by” when using an Internet search engine to look for public LinkedIn profiles – I was intrigued by the concept of dropping the X-Ray string altogether and targeting a phrase that is found on every public LinkedIn profile.

It simply never occurred to me to try it, and I sincerely appreciate the novel approach.

Gary Cozin asked me what I thought of the idea. My first impression was that I found it interesting and I respected the mini-breakthrough in thought that produced it, but I told Gary that I needed to do some testing to be able to tell if it is as effective as other methods of searching for LinkedIn profiles on the web.

So I Performed Some Tests

First – remember that when doing any comparison testing of Internet searches , you have to configure them so that they return a manageable number of results – ideally a few hundred or less. Anything higher than that, and you can get into “estimate” territory.

Here is a simple comparison of the “Public profile powered by” vs. a “standard” X-Ray search on Google.

First up – the “Public profile powered by:”

Microsoft “Public profile powered by” “greater atlanta area” “software engineer” java

That yields 7 results. You have to click on “repeat the search with the omitted results included” to get to 103 results. If you click through to page 10 of the results, for some reason there are only really 100. But you get the point.

Next we have a “standard” X-Ray search with the same criteria:

site:linkedin.com (inurl:in OR inurl:pub) -intitle:directory -inurl:dir -inurl:jobs “greater atlanta area” Microsoft “software engineer” java

That yields 287 results. But not really (thanks Google!). If you click through the results pages, you’ll be stopped on page 24 for a total of 232 results.

In that one search comparison, there is a difference of over 100 results, and I didn’t see any duplicates or bad results from my sampling with the “standard” X-Ray.

As a side note, searching for the word “Microsoft” using Google to search LinkedIn will get you many results with hits of common Microsoft software (e.g., Office), as well as the abbreviation “MS,” which even gets hits of Master’s degrees (I found at least 1 instance of this). If you want to force Google to only return the word “Microsoft,” you have to use quotes or the plus (+) sign.

So What Causes the Difference in Results?

That’s a great question. The phrase “Public profile powered by” does seem to be on every public LinkedIn profile, so why would searching for it find fewer results, let alone produce any difference?

Honestly, I am not really sure. Irina Shamaeva has some ideas as to what could cause the difference in search results.

Maybe some people at Google could shed some light on the matter? <not holding my breath>

The Bottom Line

Regardless of why Google isn’t finding all of the available public LinkedIn profiles by searching for “Public profile powered by,” the bottom line is that the “standard” (inelegant and longer) X-Ray string finds more.

Even if the results gap wasn’t as dramatically large as I found in that one test scenario (I did find some larger and smaller results variations), the fact that the results are different AT ALL is what makes me concerned. I don’t like to miss any results.

To make sure you don’t miss any available search results, I strongly encourage you to do your own testing of the various ways to search LinkedIn using an Internet search engine using relevant search terms for whatever you typically look for.

While I love the simplicity and appreciate the approach of searching for public LinkedIn profiles by not having to use the lengthy site:linkedin.com (inurl:in OR inurl:pub) -intitle:directory -inurl:dir -inurl:jobs, I would never abandon the uglier, longer string at the expense of missing any available search results (not even 1!).

Some More Google Fun

Taking the approach of targeting a phrase common to every public LinkedIn profile a step further, I also experimented with searching for the phrases “Create a public profile” and “professionals already on LinkedIn.”

Here’s a comparison:

Microsoft “Public profile powered by” “greater atlanta area” “software engineer” java

Microsoft “Create a public profile” “greater atlanta area” “software engineer” java

Microsoft “professionals already on LinkedIn” “greater atlanta area” “software engineer” java

Approximately 103, 124, and 150 results respectively.

Did that get your attention?

Why are they different at all, when all three phrases appear on all public LinkedIn profiles? I don’t have the answer.

If Google allows you to click on a cached result without apologizing for thinking you’re not human (am I bitter?), you can clearly see Google indexes the other phrases:

So What about Yahoo and Bing?

Everyone has their search engine preferences, and my first choice has always been Google. However, with the recent changes in LinkedIn X-Ray search results as well as the issue of Google thinking everyone has suddenly become a malicious bot sending automated queries to their servers, I’m looking more at Yahoo and Bing.

Interestingly though, as Irina reminded me recently, Yahoo is giving up their search technology and in the near future will be using Microsoft’s. So technically – Yahoo search may not yield any different results than Bing in the future. Enjoy the results while you can.

Anyhoo…Yahoo does currently seem to do a much better job of searching public LinkedIn profiles with the phrase of “Public profile powered by:”

Microsoft “Public profile powered by” “greater atlanta area” “software engineer” java

416 results! But don’t get too excited – if you click through to the end/last page (to keep Yahoo honest), you end up with 208.

Which is less than the 232 we found using a “standard” X-Ray string on Google.

Interestingly, Yahoo also does a better job of getting consistent results when using other phrases such as “professionals already on LinkedIn” (210 results, if you were curious).

What about Bing? Bing apparently doesn’t like searches like Microsoft “Public profile powered by” “greater atlanta area” “software engineer” java.

Final Thoughts

There is always more than one way to run a search, and there is no single “right way” to find people. Use multiple approaches, and always test them to understand and appreciate differences.

When searching any source, your goal as a sourcer or recruiter is to find all of the best candidates the source has to offer. Finding some people isn’t enough.

Regarding search string length when X-Ray searching LinkedIn – if you’re worried about the 32 word search limit that Google imposes, I’d argue you’re not taking into account that a large percentage of people with LinkedIn profiles don’t even flesh them out with (m)any keywords.

Always appreciate, understand and respect how the non-sourcer / recruiter / HR professional uses LinkedIn…most don’t use it as a full-blown resume.

So if you’re loading up your Google/LinkedIn strings with anywhere close to 32 words (e.g., site:linkedin.com (inurl:in OR inurl:pub) -intitle:directory -inurl:dir -inurl:jobs “greater atlanta area” “software engineer” java unix oracle linux application design develop C++ MySql J2EE Lead Senior SQL data javascript hibernate blah blah blah…), you are actually making it impossible to find all of the qualified candidates on LinkedIn.

Contemplate this on the tree of woe.

Have you ever been searching the Internet with Google to find resumes or LinkedIn profiles, and instead of getting your search results, you get a nice apology from Google saying that your computer or network might be sending automated queries and can’t process your request?

In the past week alone I have received a number of inquiries from curious sourcers and recruiters as to what to do about this.

Typically, this notice is accompanied by a CAPTCHA that will allow you to enter some characters to prove that you’re human.

You are human, right?

Performing a lot of X-Ray searches of LinkedIn profiles seems to trigger Google to ask me for proof of humanity.

However, just the other day I was searching for resumes online, and when I clicked to see the “cached” version of a search result, I got a different Google apology. This one didn’t even allow me to prove my humanity. Dang!

If you choose to click on “Google Help“, you’ll see that they advise you to #1 Check for malware on your computer, #2 Contact your network administrator, and #3 If the problem persists, have your network administrator contact Google.

Apparently, sending automated queries of any sort to Google is against their Terms of Service, which states that among other things, it is unacceptable to use software to Google to determine how a website or webpage ranks on Google for various queries, ‘Meta-searching’ Google, and performing ‘offline’ searches on Google.

Last time I checked, manually searching for resumes and LinkedIn profiles isn’t any of the above.

What To Do

Because I get stopped by Google’s CAPTCHA quite frequently, I did actually contact Google, inasmuch as you can contact Google by filling out their form. Not sure if anything came of that as I have never heard back (not that I was expecting to).

However, what I have found is that simply clearing my browser’s cookies gets this annoying search result interruption to go away, at least for a while. You can be selective in clearing specific cookies or you can delete them all – which will remove your saved settings for sites you’ve previously visited. Small price to pay in order to get your search results from Google.

You could also abandon Google altogether and switch to Bing, which doesn’t make you suffer through proving you’re human. Plus, Bing is actually a much better way to X-Ray search LinkedIn.

I hope that helps you if you ever got blocked by Google. Let me know if you have any other suggestions/fixes for this issue.

Thanks!

Think you know all there is to know about Google search?

I was recently asked a question regarding the use of the asterisk when searching on Google, specifically in conjunction with certain punctuation.

This person was under the impression that if you used the equal sign on either side of an asterisk when searching Google, it would function as a multiple word wildcard operator. For example, searching for [linux=*=administrator] should return results of linux system administrator, linux systems administrator, linux network administrator, linux server administrator, etc.

The short answer is that Google ignores most punctuation, and that there is no need to combine the asterisk with any other punctuation or symbols for it to perform as a single or multiple word wildcard.

The long answer is much more interesting. I decided to perform some experiments with Google’s wildcard asterisk and I uncovered a few oddities and unsolved mysteries. I’m curious if you might be able to shed some light on them. But first, I will show you exactly how you can make good use of Google’s asterisk when searching for resumes on the Internet, as well as when X-Ray searching LinkedIn and Twitter. 

The Asterisk Operator on Google

Google treats the asterisk (*) as a placeholder for 1 or more words – it can also be referred to as a single or multiple word wildcard operator, because Google treats the asterisk as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) for which it tries to find the best match(es).  Essentially, Google “fills in the blanks” wherever there is an asterisk.

According to Google, here is an example of proper syntax when leveraging the asterisk: [ Obama voted * on the * bill ] – notice how there is a space on either side of each asterisk.

Searching for Candidates using Google’s Asterisk Operator 

Judicious use of the asterisk on Google when searching for candidates can yield great results and can increase relevance.

For example, if you are looking for someone who has experience administering linux, you could search for rigid phrases such as “administered linux,” or perhaps “linux systems administrator.” However, utilizing the asterisk on Google, you can add greater flexibility in your search and capture a wider variety and a larger number of results. 

(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) “~administer * linux” -job -jobs

Notice the variety of the results of this search:

The variety of relevant phrases that Google’s wildcard operator returns from just these 6 results is eye-opening. No sourcer or recruiter would sit down and be able to think of every conceivable phrase a candidate could say to represent their linux administration experience. With the proper use of Google’s asterisk search operator, there’s no need to, because the asterisk “fills in the blanks.”

When it comes to leveraging the asterisk in a Google search, don’t think in terms of single keywords – think about sentences and phrases that candidates might use to express their responsibilities.

Using Google’s Asterisk in a LinkedIn X-Ray Search

You can make use of Google’s wildcard operator to target current titles when performing an X-Ray search.

For example:  

site:linkedin.com (inurl:in OR inurl:pub) -intitle:directory (“current * project manager” OR “current * program manager”)

This is how the asterisk is put to work – it “bridges the gap” across the word “current” to the current title – in this case – “Program Manager.”

Please note, however, that this technique is not flawless. In my testing, while this approach does find many profiles with the target current title, it does not actually find EVERY profile with the target current title. You can test this for yourself by running back-to-back external X-Ray and internal LinkedIn searches.

LinkedIn Phrase Searching

Of course you can also use the asterisk to search for flexible phrases just as we did with the Linux admin search above.

For example:

site:linkedin.com (inurl:in OR inurl:pub) -intitle:directory engineer “* cisco routers”

Instead of just searching for “cisco” and “router” or “routers” and simply matching keywords, we’re actually trying to target PHRASES that communicate responsibility. As sourcers and recruiters – you should not be looking just for keywords, you should really be looking for what people have DONE, not just mentions of search terms. Below you can see how using the asterisk has yielded results of people talking about configuring and implementing routers:

Google essentially “filled in the blank” of the asterisk preceding the two words of “cisco routers.” Clicking on a “cached” result shows exactly how our use of the asterisk pulled a phrase on this LinkedIn profile of someone who has been responsible for configuring Cisco routers.

Using Google’s Asterisk in a Twitter X-Ray Search

When X-Ray searching Twitter, you can use Google’s asterisk to search specifically for words mentioned in the “Bio” field. This is especially helpful because this is the place where you can more reliably find titles and professional skills.

Let’s try looking for people who mention the word “accountant” in their Twitter bio:

site:twitter.com “bio * accountant”

Click here for the 579 results.

Clicking into a result, we can see how this worked beautifully:

You can go a step further and try using two asterisks to reach further into the bio field:

site:twitter.com “bio * * accountant”

Click here for the 468 results.  Notice the lack of overlap in the results with the single asterisk search above.

Remember that Google treats the asterisk as a single or multiple word wildcard. Exactly how many words? I am not sure, and Google’s documentation does not appear to say. Using 2 asterisks in the example above essentially extends the distance between the word “bio” and the word “accountant” – inserting more “blanks” for Google to fill in.

And you can keep adding more. For example, let’s try 3 asterisks:

site:twitter.com “bio * * * accountant”

Click here for the 350 results.

Punctuation in Google Search Strings

Now let’s get back to the initial question about combining the asterisk with punctuation.

Google’s basic help page USED to explain that “with some exceptions, punctuation is ignored (that is, you can’t search for @#$%^&*()=+[]\ and other special characters).” I say “USED” to because I can no longer find that specific statement on Google’s basic or advanced help pages, although it can be found quoted in the web search help forum.

Interestingly, if you search Google’s web search help for “punctuation,” the second result is this:

There’s the phrase I’m looking for – however, when you click on the result, it takes you to this page, which doesn’t actually contain the phrase “with some exceptions, punctuation is ignored (that is, you can’t search for @#$%^&*()=+[]\ and other special characters).”

Weird. I wonder why it’s been removed. No doubt due to my Google-thinks-I’m-not-human search experiments.

In any event, Google is supposed to ignore the equal sign, along with @#$%^&*()+[]\. Remember that list – I’m going to show you that Google doesn’t actually ignore all of those symbols/punctuation marks.

Experimenting with the Asterisk

While Google states that you can’t search FOR the equal sign, I decided to do a little testing to see exactly what Google makes of it if you do use it on either side of an asterisk in a query, just like the person who asked me the initial question apparently did (e.g. linux=*=administrator).

I also tried several different searches using some of the other supposedly ignored punctuation in combination with the asterisk, as well as one scenario where I didn’t use any spaces on either side of the asterisk – just to see what would happen. Yeah – this is what I do in my spare time. I’m that guy.

Search #1 =*=

(inurl:resume | intitle:resume) linux=*=administrator (301 OR 703)  -job -jobs

1 result.

Search #2 /*/

(inurl:resume | intitle:resume) linux/*/administrator 301 -job -jobs

1 result- the same as the one from search #1

Search #3 Single space on either side of the asterisk, using quotes

In addition, I added quotation marks around the “linux * administrator” phrase to more closely approximate searches #1 and #2 above, as there is technically no space on either side of the asterisk, keeping it a single phrase.

(inurl:resume | intitle:resume) “linux * administrator” 301 -job -jobs

1 result again, same as before.

So this shows that Google does in fact ignore the equal sign and the slash - it doesn’t have any effect on the asterisk/wild card operator over a space.

However – things get a little interesting when you try the question mark.

Search #4 ?*?

(inurl:resume | intitle:resume) linux?*?administrator 301 -job -jobs

We get 357 results.

Okay – we go from 1 result with the = and the /, as well as spaces enclosed by quotation marks, to 357 results simply by using a question mark? Something is going on with the question mark, but I am not sure exactly what. However -let’s remember that Google doesn’t explicitly mention the question mark in their list of ignored punctuation: @#$%^&*()=+[]\.

So the question mark really is a question mark. Yeah, I went there.

Do you have any insight as to why Google treats the question mark (?) any differently than an equal sign or a slash?

Search #5 A single space on either side of the asterisk, without quotes

(inurl:resume | intitle:resume) linux * administrator 301 -job -jobs

357 results again.

These results provide SOME insight, because they return the same number of results as search #4 that used the question marks. This leads me to believe that the question mark is actually ignored, because it returns the same number of results as the string that simply has spaces on either side of the asterisk.

However, if the question mark is ignored, then how can Google return fewer/different results in searches #1 and #2 that use the = and the /, which should also be ignored?

More questions than answers here. Have any insight?

Search #6 No space on either side of the asterisk

(inurl:resume | intitle:resume) linux*administrator 301 -job -jobs

499 results this time. Interesting, yes?

This reveals another mystery, because I can’t explain exactly why linux*administrator (no spaces) and linux * administrator (single space on either side of the asterisk) return different results, let alone why the search with no spaces returns broader results, which is a little counterintuitive considering all we did was eliminate the spaces around the asterisk. If anything, one might assume the results should tighten?

I attached a capture of 3 results from page 10 – notice how far apart the words administrator/administration and Linux are from each other. 

Search #7 &*&

It gets even more interesting. As we’ve seen, Google claims to ignore most punctuation, including the ampersand. However, it certainly does not ignore the &, as evidenced by the fact that this search returns 0 results:

(inurl:resume | intitle:resume) linux&*&administrator 301 -job -jobs

Zero results.

Conclusion

The single/multiple word wildcard operator on Google has many uses – it can help you target current titles with LinkedIn X-Ray searches, search for terms and titles in Twitter bios, and move beyond simply searching for keywords and step into the realm of searching for phrases that suggest actual responsibilities.

As for the combination of punctuation and the asterisk operator, it appears that the = sign (as well as a few other supposedly ignored symbols) actually seem to “bridge the gap” and effectively convert strings employing the asterisk (*) to something very similar to a phrase search using quotation marks (e.g., “linux * administrator”). While the asterisk can represent 1 or more words, when used in conjunction with a phrase search using quotation marks (or, as we have seen with = or / punctuation on either side of a single asterisk), Google returns results where the words on the left of the asterisk are always very close to those on the right of the asterisk – in most cases they are separated by only 1 word.

However, as we have seen – not all symbols are created equal. The linux?*?administrator is not processed the same way as linux=*=administrator. It appears that the ? does not “bridge the gap” of the words on either side of the asterisk as the = sign does, and the results are much looser – resembling the results of linux * administrator without quotations. Without the quotations, Google expands the proximity/distance between the words on the left and the right of the asterisk, in many cases well beyond 3 words.

Do you have any answers to the mysteries revealed in this post? If so – please let me know. Thanks!

This post is second in a series focused on using Google to search for resumes on the Internet.

In the first post I left some unanswered questions, such as why:

• I didn’t talk about searching for CV’s
• I didn’t suggest using the tilde ~ operator in conjuntion with the word “resume”
• I didn’t use -~job when trying to eliminate false positive results
• I didn’t talk about targeting filetypes
• I didn’t talk about just searching for the word “resume” without using it in conjunction with inurl: or intitle:
• I didn’t mention the use of Google Custom Search Engines (CSE’s) to find resumes

Whether or not you had those questions burning in your mind, I will address them all in this post.

Challenging Google Resume Search Assumptions

I’ve read my fair share of recruiting blogs and online discussions between recruiters and sourcers. As such, I encounter quite a bit of advice regarding tips and tricks to use when searching for resumes on the Internet using Google.

Some of the suggestions I see make sense at first, but being the inquisitive guy that I am, I don’t just take the suggestions and run with them, assuming they accomplish what they seem to accomplish. I take the time to test search tips, tricks, and suggestions to make sure they add value to my search efforts and that they do EXACTLY what they claim to do.

Today, you get to benefit from some of these tests, as I am going to challenge some of the suggestions I’ve come across over the years when it comes to searching for resumes on the Internet using Google. Let’s get going, shall we?

Using ~Job To Eliminate The Words Job And Jobs From Results

Google has a special operator that allows you to search for synonyms, as well as alternate endings for any word that is preceded by the tilde ~ symbol. For example, let’s see what kinds of results are returned by this simple search: ~car

You can see that Google returned results including the word “car,” but also highlighting words such as “BMW,” and ”cars” - words Google’s search engine thinks are synonymous with the word “car.” The fact that Google thinks the word “car” is synonymous with BMW is powerful and free advertizing for BMW – but that’s for another post.

I’ve seen some sourcers and recruiters suggest coupling the tilde ~ symbol with the word “job” in an attempt to eliminate results with the words “job” and “jobs,” instead of using both -job and -jobs, as I recommend.

HOWEVER - I have found that using -~job does NOT in fact eliminate all results that mention word variants, or words with alternate endings, such as “jobs.” For example – run this on Google: (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) -~job

On page 2 of the results, you can find this:

Yep – I see the word “jobs” in there, don’t you? —> “I’ve had too many jobs.”

Let’s see what happens if we actually try to use -~job and also search specifically for the word “jobs” in the same search: (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) -~job “jobs”

Click here for the results. 475,000 results at the time of the search.

If Google actually interpreted -~job as both -job and -jobs, we shouldn’t get ANY results, let alone nearly half a million, because the search is written to actually look for a word we are trying to eliminate.

You will essentially get the same results if you run the search this way: (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) -~job +jobs

But wait, the Google search weirdness continues!  Let’s see what happens when we use -~job and also try and make Google search for “job” at the same time: (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) -~job “job”

Click here for the results. You get 5 results that become 10 if you click “repeat the search with the omitted results included.”

I hope you can appreciate how strange those results actually are.

Confused by the results?  Me too!

It actually takes using Google’s “exactly as is” search symbol, the plus + sign to finally see that at least using -~job will in fact eliminate the word “job” from search results.

What this testing demonstrates is that trying to eliminate the 2 words “job” and “jobs” from being returned in search results by using -~jobs DOES NOT WORK.

It appears that the tilde operator on Google does not in fact also search for and return (or eliminate) words with alternate endings, such as plural words. For the word “car,” yes, but not when it comes to the word job. As such, it’s safer to simply write out -job -jobs.

Using ~Resume To Search for Resumes and CV’s

I’ve heard some people suggest coupling the tilde with the word resume, in order to find results that have words synonymous with the word “resume,” such as CV or Curriculum Vitae in their url or the title of web results.

For example: Java (intitle:~resume OR inurl:~resume) -job -jobs -sample -samples -”resume service” 75001..76155 (TX OR Texas)

Let’s test this theory.

Search #1 No Tilde

Java (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) -job -jobs -sample -samples -”resume service” 75001..76155 (TX OR Texas)

Click here for the results. 294 results at the time of the search.

Search #2 WITH Tilde

Java (intitle:~resume OR inurl:~resume) -job -jobs -sample -samples -”resume service” 75001..76155 (TX OR Texas)

Click here for the results. 2760 at the time of the search.

Wow! 2760 results when we used the tilde vs 294 without the tilde – seems like a no-brainer to always throw in the tilde when searching for resumes, right?

Not so fast…let’s take a look at the search results past result #300 when using the tilde and see what we find:

Click here to see the search results page.

Some pretty ugly results, right?

Yuck!

So where are the 2400 extra resumes we were expecting to get?

Keep searching past the 300 mark and you will see tons of junk results. That’s why I can’t in good conscience recommend using the tidle ~ in conjunction with the word “resume” when searching for resumes.

Where are the CV’s Anyway?

If you’re wondering where the CV’s were in the results, you can simply target them with a search string like this: Java (intitle:cv OR inurl:cv OR intitle:”curriculum vitae” OR inurl:”curriculum vitae”) -job -jobs -sample -samples -”resume service” 75001..76155 (TX OR Texas)

Click here for the results. 82 results at the time of the search.

More on Searching for CV’s

You could of course search for both “resume” and CV in the titles and urls in web pages and documents, like this: (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume OR intitle:cv OR inurl:cv OR intitle:”curriculum vitae” OR inurl:”curriculum vitae”)

But when I have searched for CV’s, I have noticed that many people who save their resumes online who use the term CV are in school, are educators at a university, or are international (non-US) folks, whom you may or may not be able to engage depeding on your location and need.

Did you notice that 4 out of the 5 results from the last screenshot have .edu in the url? That means they are from university sites, and I have found many of these .edu CV’s to be of people with no paid work experience – which depending on your hiring needs, you may not be able to hire.

Auto-Stemming: Trying to Use -Job to Eliminate “Jobs” From Results

When it comes to your search terms, Google claims that they will look for some word variants automatically, such as words with alternate endings or pluralization.

However, it does not appear to work on the word “job.”

For example, if you are trying to eliminate false positive results of the word “jobs” when searching for resumes, using -job does not eliminate results with the word “jobs,” although if Google were in fact truly auto-stemming the word job, we could assume it should.

For example, let’s try this: (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) -job

Here is a result from page 2:

That result does in fact mention the word “jobs.”

So once again I have to recommend simply spelling out -job -jobs when trying to eliminate job-related false positive results, because Google does not auto-stem -job to also include -jobs.

Not Searching for the Word “Resume” in Titles and URLs

I’ve heard some sourcers and recruiters say that it is unecessary to search for the word “resume” specifically in titles and URLs, through the use of (inurl:resume OR intitle:resume).

This is because simply searching for the word “resume” should return results with the word “resume” in the body of the website/page as well as in the url and title.

This is accurate, for example - let’s see what happens if we run this search: Java “resume” -job -jobs -sample -samples -”resume service” 75001..76155 (TX OR Texas)

Click here for the results.  About 1400 at the time of the search.

You can see that the word “resume” is in fact highlighted in the blue title and green url lines, as well as in the “body” of the search results.

If you remember, the search I used previously that did specifically target (inurl:resume OR intitle:resume) only returned 294 results.

When I searched for “resume” without specifying that the word had to be in either the url or title, I got 1390 results.

That’s a big difference!

However, let’s not get too excited about the “extra” 1100 results we get from just searching for the word “resume” and not limiting the search to only results mentioning “resume” in the url and/or title.

Let’s take a look at the results past #300 to see what we’re really getting: Click here for the results.

Umm…those aren’t resumes – those are false positives!

Quality vs Quantity

Don’t ever be impressed by large quantities of results until you check in the “deep” end and make sure that they are just as high quality as the first few pages.

This test has shown that simply searching for the word “resume” anywhere and not forcing Google to specifically target results that mention the word “resume” in the title and/or url of results does not in fact yield more high quality results.

What it does is get you more junk in most cases.

So I recommend always beginning your resume searches using the (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) syntax like this, specifically targeting urls and titles that contain the word “resume”: Java (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) -job -jobs -sample -samples -”resume service” 75001..76155 (TX OR Texas)

Here is a snippet from the the LAST page of the results:

Yep – resumes all the way to the last page.

Searching for Filetypes

The last assumption I will challenge is that it’s always a good idea to search for specific file types when searching for resumes on the Internet.

Google does support searching for results of specific filetypes – here is an example of a search targeting PDF files:

Java (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) -job -jobs -sample -samples -”resume service” 75001..76155 (TX OR Texas) filetype:pdf

All of the results are PDF files.

While searching for specific filetypes can be handy, there are many filetypes available to people when saving their resume online.

Back in 2007, I read Jim Stroud’s Resume Sourcing Survey and it was an eye-opener – there are so many different filetypes people use when creating and saving resumes online. While you may think you are uncovering a lot of resumes when searching for doc, html, php and pdf fileytpes, you’re probably not searching for ASP, XML, PID, PHTML, MHT, DOT, CGI, XSL, WPD, and SDW filetypes.

I am not exactly sure why some people suggest searching for specific filetypes when searching for resumes. If I had to guess, I would say it has something to do with trying to get rid of false positive non-resume results.

Perhaps the thought process is that job postings and such are not typically DOC or PDF files?

In any event, searching for specific filetypes is unnecessary, because when you use a search string that doesn’t specify filestypes such as this one: Java (intitle:~resume OR inurl:~resume) -job -jobs -sample -samples -”resume service” 75001..76155 (TX OR Texas) …you’ll get every resume result available, REGARDLESS OF FILETYPE.

You can see from the results below that it returns ALL results, regardless of filetype.  In the screenshot, you can see we snagged 4 different filetypes from the first 4 results: HTM, PDF, DOC, and HTML.

That’s why I don’t recommend targeting specific filetypes – because if you do, unless you actually search for every possible filetype available, you will be missing results.

Perhaps the only time I would strongly recommend targeting specific filetypes is when you are specifically looking to find people who do not title or save their resume with the word “resume.”

Using Google Custom Search Engines (CSE’s) to Find Resumes

There has been much written on using Google Custom Search Engines to find resumes on the Internet.

Creating your own and using others’ Google CSE’s can be a convenient way of automatically building in core and essential search logic (title/url search, false positive term removal, etc.) so that you don’t have to keep entering it into your searches.

However, when it comes to using someone else’s CSE, I’d advise that you not blindly use it without adapting it to your specific use.

Only you know what it is you are looking for specifically, where you would like to get your results from, and the specific locations you would like to recruit from.

I believe the best CSE’s are those that have location-specific logic built in, so that all you need to enter is your keywords and nothing else.

Implicitly trusting that someone else’s custom search engine has the optimum search logic would be a mistake. Use CSE’s designed by others as a starting point to modify and create your own that suits your specific need.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed me walking you through testing some of the more common Google resume search suggestions I’ve come across over the years.

It can be both easy and dangerous to follow search advice from anyone, regardless of their experience or reputation, and take their suggestions and immediately begin putting them to use.

I strongly recommend that you take the time to thoroughly test any sourcing/recruiting advice you read or hear about before making the assumption that it works as intended and that can help you achieve your goals.

As I’ve shown you today – some suggestions such as searching for specific filetypes can actually prevent you from finding all of the resumes available online, and others such as searching for ~resume can yield more junk than viable results.

Want to learn how to find resumes on the Internet using Google?  You’ve come to the right place!

Whether you are new to searching the Internet for resumes or you are a veteran Interent sourcer, I’ve included some tips, tricks, and observations for the novice and expert alike.

Targeting Resumes

When using Google to search specifically for resumes, it’s a good idea to begin by searching for the word “resume” in the title and/or the url of web pages.

For example: (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume)

Here is a sample result to illustrate how this works – we can see the word “Resume” in the blue TITLE line, as well as in the green URL line. The first line of any search result is the title of the webpage, and the url is the specific web page’s address.

Targeting the word “resume” in the title and/or url is very handy, because for many people, it’s simply common sense/instinct to either title the web page containing their resume with the word “resume,” and/or save their resume using the word “resume” in the name of the file.

Eliminating False Positive Results

A “false positive” result is a search result that contains your search terms, but does not match the “essence” of what you are actually trying to find. For example – if you’re searching for resumes, there are many sites that will be returned in your search results that are in fact not resumes, such as sites advertising resume samples and job postings that mention phrases such as, “submit resumes to…”

In order to remove most non-resume false positive results, you can use Google’s version of the Boolean NOT operator, which is the minus sign, to prevent your search from returning results with words such as sample, job, etc.

For example:

(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) -job -jobs -sample -samples

Other ideas of terms you can try to eliminate that may return false positive results:

-eoe -submit -free -”resume service” -template -”resume service” -”resume writers” -”resume writing” 

Targeting Local Resumes

Area Codes

Some people who decide to make their resume available on the Internet also decide to publish a phone number. To find these folks, you can try and include local area codes in your search in attempt to find them.

Here is my favorite area code lookup site

Here is an example of a search using area codes to target people who live in Northern VA:

(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) -job -jobs -sample -samples -”resume service” (703 OR 571)

What you’ll notice, however, is that searching for area codes can easily produce false positive results, as can be seen in the screenshot below – which are the first 4 results from the search. Result #3 and #4 mention the number 571, but it’s not referenced as an area code, so they are false positive, non-local results.

To clean up the false positive results that mention 571 or 703 but are not of resumes of people who live in VA, you can add the state and state abbreviation to the search as well as exclude more non-resume terms and phrases:

(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) -job -jobs -sample -samples -template -”resume service” -”resume writers” -”resume writing” (703 OR 571) (VA OR Virginia)

While there are still a good number of non-resume false positive results, this can be expected because we didn’t even search for any keywords/skills. Once we do, we will notice a significant drop off in false positives.

For example:

(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) java oracle -job -jobs -sample -samples -template -”resume service” -”resume writers” -”resume writing” (703 OR 571) (VA OR Virginia)

Zip Codes

Another way to search for local resumes is to target a zip code radius.

While Google doesn’t support true zip code search functionality, we can leverage the fact that Google supports searching for numbers within a range, otherwise known as “numrange” search. You can perform a numrange search on any sequential (low to high) set of numbers by typing two periods between the numbers without any spaces. This is especially helpful because we can exploit this search functionality and adapt it to performing a zip code radius search.

For example, take your target zip code and use this handy zip code radius lookup application, which you can use to search for zip codes in a radius and sort the zip codes within the radius from low to high.

Using a central zip code of 75201 in Dallas, TX and targeting a 20 mile radius, we can use that zip code radius application to get a range of zip codes from a low zip code of 75001 to a high zip code of 76155.

Using Google’s numrange search syntax, here is an example of a search string targeting people within a 20-mile radius of 75201 in TX:

Java (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) -job -jobs -sample -samples -”resume service” 75001..76155 (TX OR Texas)

Sample results: you can see the zip code search worked beautifully:

Be Aware

Here are a couple of things to keep in mind when searching for local resumes:

• Not everyone will publish a phone number on their resume
• If they do publish a phone number on their resume, it could be a cell phone with a non-local area code if they relocated from another area – this is why is can be helpful to search for zip codes as well as area codes
• If they don’t publish a phone number at all, they should at least mention a city and/or state

Targeting Resumes That Are Not Titled As “Resume”

Although plenty of people do title their resume or the web page containing their resume with the word “resume,” there are some people who don’t. After searching for all of the results that DO contain the word “resume” in the URL or title of the web page, you need to try to eliminate them from future search results using Google’s NOT operator, the minus sign, to specifically target the results that don’t mention resume in the title or URL. For example:

-inurl:resume -intitle:resume

Don’t be tempted to try and write that as -(inurl:resume OR intitle:resume), because Google will not read that search string in the manner in which you intend. Instead of eliminating results with the word “resume” in either the URL or the title, Google will in fact will do the exact opposite. Click here to see the sad reality. Sorry Google.

Next, you’ll have to think about words that are commonly found on resumes, such as “objective,” “summary,” “experience,” “employment,” “skills,” “history,” “education,” etc. Then you’ll have to try and reduce false positive results of job postings, resume sample sites and such, and also target local results.  Putting it all together, your search string could look like this:

Java -intitle:resume -inurl:resume (objective OR summary) (experience OR history) education -job -jobs -sample -samples (301 OR 240 OR 410) (MD OR Maryland)

First page results:

Analyzing the Results

We can see that the first result is essentially of a resume, yet the person saved their work history as “biodata.” See?  Some people don’t use the word resume.

Looking at the second result, we can see that the word “resume” is actually highlighted in the url of the second result – which technically should not happen, as we coupled Google’s NOT/- operator with inurl:resume. Yet more proof that Boolean search does not = Internet search.  That’s 2 strikes, Google.

The third result is definitely not a resume – it is a LinkedIn directory by name, within which is at least one positive hit on our search terms.

When You Stray, You Pay

While there are no doubt resumes on the Internet that do not mention the word “resume,” anywhere within them, I have found that when you stray from targeting the word “resume” in web page titles and URLs, you can quickly find yourself swimming in a sea of false positive results, which is a huge time drain.

I believe the 80/20 Pareto principle solidly applies here: You will get 80% of your viable results from targeted resume searches and the other 20% from searching without targeting the word “resume.” Likewise, you can easily waste 80% of your time trying to sort through the sea of false positives in order to dig up the 20% of resumes that do not mention the term.

Conclusion

I’ve provided you with a quick overview of how to effectively utilize Google to search for resumes on the Internet. Be aware though - all is not perfect in when hunting for resumes in Google land – if you have not already, please read these 2 posts: The Internet has Free Resumes – So What?and Boolean search does not = Internet search.

Have Unanswered Questions?

For those of you who read this post and asked why I:

• didn’t talk about searching for CV’s
• didn’t suggest using the tilde ~ operator in conjuntion with the word “resume”
• didn’t use -~job when trying to eliminate false positive results
• didn’t talk about targeting filetypes
• didn’t talk about just searching for the word “resume” without using it in conjunction with inurl: or intitle:
• didn’t mention Google CSE’s

…you’re in luck.  All you have to do is read this post in which I debunk common Google resume search suggestions and assumptions.

BEWARE: This post takes a contrarian (yet fact-based!) view of the Internet as a sourcing tool that may be unsuitable to some readers. If you don’t want to hear anything other than how awesome the Internet is for sourcing and recruiting, please stop reading now. 

The Internet has Free Resumes – SO WHAT?

Okay, so you can find free resumes on the Internet.  So what? What’s the big deal?  The fact that the Internet is free? While free is nice and certainly can’t be argued with, I am sure you have also heard that you get what you pay (or don’t pay) for. Or if it’s too good to be true – it is.

So let’s take a look at what you get for free on the Internet:

Not a lot of resumes

If you are a sourcer or recruiter I am sure that at some point in your career you’ve read somewhere or heard someone say how the Internet has 10X the number of candidates that can be found on the online job board resume databases. I’ve always taken that for face value because, to be honest, it’s really tough to prove or disprove such a figure/statement. However, I am a bit of a skeptic and I don’t just accept what I read or hear at face value – especially grandiose statements/claims, so I’ve taken a critical look into the matter.

While you may be able to find more names/people on the Internet than you can find on any given internal (corporate) resume database or the major online job board resume databases such as Monster, Careerbuilder, etc., the Internet does NOT have more RESUMES, even when it comes to the most common job titles and roles. 

In fact, I’ve found that the Internet has in many cases at least 10X FEWER RESUMES than you can find even on ONE major job board.

Sound crazy or impossible? Would you like some apples-to-apples comparison searches in specific locations comparing the number of resumes you can find on Monster vs. the number of resumes you can find on the Internet via Google? You’ve come to the right place – here are two posts/search exercises that illustrate this point dramatically: Monster vs. the Internet Round 1, and Monster vs. the Internet Round 2.

What’s that? You don’t need resumes to find people on the Internet? Yes, you certainly don’t need resumes to find great candidates – you can search blogs, user groups, company directories, conference attendee lists, etc., and find lots of people. Unfortunately, in most cases, without a resume we can’t reliably determine exactly where these people live (kinda helpful to know), how much experience they have (or how recent it’s been), or what they have been specifically responsibile for. For a detailed analysis – read this post on the intrinsic benefits and advantages of resume database recruiting over any other method of talent identification.

Unstructured data

A database is a structured collection of records or data. Structured data enables more accurate and targeted information retrieval. The Internet is NOT a structured collection of records or data – it’s unstructured, and as such, the Internet is by its very nature an impendiment to targeted and accurate information retrieval.

This can be especially challenging when trying to find people in a specific location, because the Internet is not designed to allow you to do so. Most people try and search for area codes, states (spelled out or abbreviated), or even get more creative and use Google’s numrange functionality and attempt to target zip codes, but any way you slice it – Internet search engines don’t know that you’re looking for area codes, zip codes, or even specific states. So you often get lots of false positive results – hits with the numbers OF the area codes or zip codes, but the numbers themselves are not actually area codes or zip codes. You can also get false positives of pages that happen to mention your target city/state, but the person referenced doesn’t actually LIVE in that city/state.

Trying to specifically target resumes is equally fraught with peril. You can try using the (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume), but then you miss people who do not title their resume as “resume.” If you DON’T use (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume), you open yourself up to a LARGE amount of false positives, even if you try and eliminate job postings and other annoying false positives. This is again due to the fact that the Internet is not a structured database, and no matter WHAT you put in your search strings, the Internet search engines don’t know what you’re looking for. In effect, sourcers and recruiters using the Internet to find resumes are actually performing “work-arounds” in that they are creatively applying search operators and symbols to make the Internet return results they’re looking for, even though neither the Internet nor the Internet search engines were designed for sourcing and recruiting.

A poor search interface

Yeah – I said it.

Yahoo, Ask, and Google don’t even support full Boolean logic. Come on. Performing text-based search without full Boolean logic is like performing surgery with a butter knife – crude and imprecise, and some things simply can’t be accomplished.

MS Live supports full Boolean logic, but has no wildcard/stemming/truncation search. And while Exalead supports full Boolean logic as well as wildcard/stemming AND fixed and configurable proximity searching (WOW!) – it indexes a small fraction of what the other large Internet search engines do. Sigh. Can’t sourcers and recruiters catch a break here?

ALL of the major job board resume databases support full Boolean logic, and Monster supports fixed proximity with the NEAR operator. While they of course have the advantage over the Internet of being designed soley as resume databases – their search interfaces are well ahead of most Internet search engines. Am I the only recruiting professional that loves to leverage the asterisk and be able to use the NOT operator on a parenthetical statement?

Anyone who has used a full-featured text search engine that supports not only standard Boolean logic, but also extended Boolean such as configurable proximity and variable term weighting (such as Lucene or dtSearch) on a structured database can tell you that in comparison – using Internet search engines is like trying to tie your shoe laces with mittens on…while handcuffed.

And of course Internet search engine interfaces don’t allow for reliable location-specific searching. This is compounded by the fact that as stated previously, the Internet does not structure any data, let alone location-specific information.

Irrelevant results

Google uses their PageRank link analysis, among other things to determine “relevance,” which has NOTHING to do with the relevance of a potential candidate’s qualifications based on a search. In fact, it’s inherently flawed in that a person who happens to have created their own website and has posted their resume on it may not have ANY links to it, so Google will interpret it as a result of low relevance.

Yahoo and other search Engines do not appear to disclose their relevance ranking/sorting methods – so who really knows what they think are relevant results? Also – am I the only one that thinks it’s ridiculous to get 2.5 million results from any search? Any guess as to how many are actually RELEVANT?

The very fact that the Internet is not a structured database of people makes it intrinsically difficult to get relevant results from any search – the Internet has tons of garbage on it. Trying to look for the term “resume” or “CV” pulls many false positives, as does any search for location-specific information such as area codes, states, or even 5 digit zip codes simply because there is so much STUFF on the Internet, and it doesn’t know what you’re looking for.

No competitive advantage

The Internet is free – anyone with an Internet connection can search it to find people and resumes. While there is no denying that some people are more proficient at searching the Internet, everyone has access to the same information – and there aren’t even that many resumes on the Internet to fight over. I don’t see that as a competitive advantage of any significance.

Even major online job board resume databases offer more competitive advantage than the Internet, because they cost money and not every person or organization pays for access to even 1 job board resume database. Plus – they all have decent search interfaces/engines.

Any recruiting or staffing organization of any significant size should have an internal resume database that affords them a TRUE competitive advantage – access to a large number of unique candidates that other people and organizations do not have (any and/or easy) access to, stored in a structured database with a powerful search engine that supports full (and ideally extended) Boolean. 

Conclusion

• It doesn’t have many resumes
• It’s unstuctured data
• It’s intrinsically difficult to find people in specific locations
• It’s intrinsically difficult to find people with specific experience and qualifications
• It has poor search interfaces
• It has TONS of irrelevant results
• It does not afford any significant competitive advantage

Before some readers cry “blasphemy!” – there is no denying that you CAN leverage the Internet to find fantastic talent – everyone knows that. But let’s not conveniently overlook the fact that using Internet search engines to locate people with specific skills and experience that live in targeted areas is intrinsically difficult due to the fact that you are using Internet search engines as well as the Internet in a manner that they were not specifically designed for (targeting people that live in specific places with specific experience and qualifications). Finding SOME people on the Internet is easy, but consistently finding a solid quantity of the RIGHT people is definitely not.

Because of this, using the Internet via Internet Search Engines for sourcing and recruiting has an intrinsically low ROTI (return on time invested). But hey – don’t blame the Internet or the Internet search engines. That’s like getting upset because your blender/food processor isn’t effective at mowing your lawn.  

If you only need to find a handful of the right people every month, perhaps the Internet alone, with all of its intrinsic limitations, can still fulfill all of your hiring needs. Regardless, there ARE and more effective methods and technologies available.

What really drives me crazy is that I feel that most people don’t even know how to effectively leverage their own internal resume database or even the online job boards if they have access to them - where they can run more precise searches and find more people who live in targeted areas that have specific skills and experience and enjoy a much higher ROTI - yet they spend lots of time searching the Internet where it’s harder to find specifically qualified people in targeted locations and there are less of them to reliably find in the first place.

I’d argue that every sourcer and recruiter leverage ALL resources available to them – but I believe they should START with the rousources that produce the highest ROTI first, and then work their way backwards from there.

I’ll end this post with an analogy:

If you were in the oil prospecting business, would you choose to specifically target and utilize technologies and methods that made it intrinsically difficult to find oil deposits?  And would you specifically target areas where you know there isn’t much oil in the first place and where everyone else has already searched and picked over?

Think about it.

In response to my post of Resumes on the Internet: Monster vs. Google one of my readers commented that “While it may be true that Monster has more resumes than Google, using a zip code search is not a fair comparison for Google. People who post their resumes on Monster are required to enter their zip code, while people who resumes are stored online will generally only put their email and/or phone number. Also, even using the term resume can be limiting in Google. Because it was not built to only index resumes, you have to get more creative to filter out the noise. You can try the ~CV or ~Resume, you can also take that out completely and search for types of documents, .DOC, .PDF, etc. and look for words commonly found in CV’s like education, objective, etc.”

His comment inspired me to get these industry heavyweights into the ring for a second battle and experiment with not using zip code ranges or the word “resume” when searching for resumes on the Internet using Google. Let’s begin with the same searches as Monster vs. Google Round 1.

Search #1 – Java, Oracle, Sprint or Nextel, State of MD

Google #1 Zip range (original search) = 4 results

(intitle:resume | inurl:resume) java oracle (sprint | nextel) 20601..21930 (MD | Maryland) -~job -~jobs

Google #2 No zip range, using area codes instead = 3 results

(intitle:resume | inurl:resume) java oracle (sprint | nextel) (301 | 410 | 443 | 240) (MD | Maryland) -~job -~jobs

Google #3 No zip or state = 6 results, 3 are not local to MD, but we did gain 1 new resume

(intitle:resume | inurl:resume) java oracle (sprint | nextel) (301 | 410 | 443 | 240) -MD -Maryland -~job -~jobs

Because we know that not everyone actually titles or saves or refers to their resume as a “resume,” we’ll try to search for words commonly found on resumes. Note – I am not a fan of ~resume or ~cv because I tend to get lots of junk. I am not fooled by a larger quantity of results when the quality goes down – it’s not about quantity, it’s about relevance. Also, not every mention of “cv” is actually referring to a curriculum vitae – I get all kinds of strange false positives with the letters CV. “CV” is more common internationally than in the U.S., and in this case, we’re searching for U.S. based candidates. Additionally, as one observant reader pointed out, many online resumes are of people at educational institutions (.edu) – and many of those contain mention of CV. For most positions, people with only educational experience are not viable candidates. So, instead of shooting for the word “resume,” we’ll go for common resume words:

Google #4 No mention of “resume,” using zip range = 33 results, however – no resumes I can see

NOT “resume” (objective | summary) education (history | experience) java oracle (sprint | nextel) 20601..21930 (301 | 410 | 443 | 240) (MD | Maryland) -~job -~jobs

Note – for you search geeks out there, using -intitle:resume -inurl:resume did not work as the syntax suggests it should – it still includes the word “resume” in the url. For example, this search:

-intitle:resume -inurl:resume (objective | summary) education (history | experience) java oracle (sprint | nextel) 20601..21930 (301 | 410 | 443 | 240) (MD | Maryland) -~job -~jobs

Yielded results like this:

Verdict: Monster crushed Google

Search #2 Java, Oracle, State of MD (very simple and broad search)

Google #1 – Zip range (original search) = 220 results

(intitle:resume | inurl:resume) java oracle 20601..21930 (MD | Maryland) -~job -~jobs

Google #2 No zip range, using area codes instead = 218 results. HOWEVER, these results have significant overlap with Google search #1

(intitle:resume | inurl:resume) java oracle (301 | 240 | 443 | 410) (MD | Maryland) -~job -~jobs

I tried to shoot for mutually exclusive results by negating the zip code range from search #1, however, I could not negate the zip code range and get it to run properly. For example, I tried all 3 variations below to no proper effect:
-20601..21930
-(20601..21930)
NOT 20601..21930

Google #3 No mention of zip or state – just area codes = 375

(intitle:resume | inurl:resume) java oracle (301 | 240 | 443 | 410) -MD -Maryland -~job -~jobs

While this search returned 375 results – most of the results are false positives of non local candidates. See below:

As you can see, the MD-specific area code numbers come up as false positive hits in non-local resumes

I will not bother with not using (intitle:resume | inurl:resume) – as stated previously, although I concede that targeting the word “resume” is limiting, whenever you go beyond it, you get tons of garbage false positive results (see Search #1 above). I (and most sourcers and recruiters) should have better (higher yield) sources to tap for Talent rather than having to dig through large quantities of false positives to find a handful of relevant results.

Monster – 592 results @ 1 month, 1000+ @ 3 months

Java and oracle – in MD

Verdict: Monster destroys Google

Conclusion
After seeing the results of Search scenarios #1 and #2, I will not bother to repeat the other searches I executed in Monster vs. Google Round 1. I’ve seen enough to know that regardless of how you spin Booleans searching for candidates on the Internet (zip codes, area codes, resume or not resume, etc…), the quantity of candidates with resumes on the Internet is not as large as many would believe or assume, and certainly not even close to as large as even 1 of the major online job boards.

The reader who inspired this post made an excellent point – Google and other search engines are not designed to index resumes. That’s why I have never been crazy about finding resumes in the Internet – while it certainly can be done, it’s like using a screwdriver as a hammer – you’re trying to use a tool for something other than it’s original or intended design.  That certainly explains the results of this exercise.

If you’re looking for resumes – why not leverage systems specifically designed to index resumes, like the job boards (paid and free), as well as your own internal database/ATS? Which, by the way, is also free.

And if you happen to believe the hype that the job boards have poor quality candidates – please read this post on the quality of job board candidates that will provide you with a reality check.

I hope you enjoyed round 2!