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.

I just updated my free sourcing and recruiting resources page!

You can always navigate to the free resources page at any time by using the top nav bar which will escort you to a library of nearly 50 knowledge-laden links!

All in one page you can find a collection of articles related to sourcing and recruiting, including the 5 levels of talent mining/candidate sourcing, candidate sourcing best practices and mistakes, social recruiting, how to search LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Spoke, ZoomInfo and Jigsaw for free, Boolean logic, semantic search, Lean / Just-In-Time sourcing and recruiting, and automated candidate sourcing and matching solutions.

Click the image below to be taken to the free sourcing and recruiting resources page:

Be sure to bookmark or tag this page as I will continue to add more free sourcing and recruiting resources. Also – please “pay it forward” – share this page with anyone who might benefit!

Thanks!

The game is afoot.

It appears that something’s happening behind the scenes at LinkedIn. Have you noticed anything odd when running a typical LinkedIn X-Ray search on Google and Yahoo?

I have. For example – try running this search:

site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:in) -intitle:directory (controller OR CFO) “Charlotte, North Carolina Area”

You’ll get results that look like this:

Notice how instead of returning results of individual LinkedIn profiles – for some reason, the results come back organized by first or last name. 

Clicking on the first result will take you to a page like this, where only the first result matches the X-Ray search parameters:

Hints in the URL

Notice the URL of each result:

The URL is truncated – so we’re missing some info.

If you’re using Firefox, you can drag your cursor/pointer over the result title to view the entire URL (at the bottom of the browser). Simply clicking on an individual search result will also show you the entire URL:

If you’re a search geek like me, you’re no doubt intrigued by the URL, and you’re trying to figure out exactly what LinkedIn is doing behind the scenes to take a “standard” X-Ray string and return results organized and grouped by first or last name.

I certainly didn’t search for “Larry.”

OR vs. AND

I’ve initially found that these new and different results seem to be more prevalent with X-Ray search strings using OR statements as opposed to simple AND-based queries.

For example, this 2 keyword X-Ray string brings back a mix of our more familiar individual profile results from LinkedIn as well as results grouped by first AND last name:

site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:in) -intitle:directory java oracle ”Charlotte, North Carolina Area”

I haven’t yet figured out why an LinkedIn X-Ray searches with OR statements seem to have a much higher percentage of the new organized-by-first-or-last-name search results than X-Ray searches only using ANDs. 

Have any ideas?

Current Title Searches

For those who are curious – configuring X-Ray searches to try and target LinkedIn profiles with specific current titles (e.g., “current * controller”) are also similarly affected.

Actually, this kind of search seems to suffer more, because the result that actually matches the current title condition isn’t typically the first search result. In fact, in one of my tests, when clicking the first search result and searching through all of the results returned by first name  the only matching result on the first page was the 23rd!

site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:in) -intitle:directory “Charlotte, North Carolina Area” “current * controller”

The Fix

The good news, at least temporarily, is that we can easily get back to our more familiar X-Ray search results containing only individual LinkedIn profiles.

We can actually do this in at least a couple of different ways, but my preferred method works because all of the new and strange search results seem to have “dir” in the URL.

That means all you have to do is add -inurl:dir to your X-Ray search strings.

For example,  adding -inurl:dir to the X-Ray search I used at the beginning of this post:

site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:in) -intitle:directory -inurl:dir (controller OR CFO) “Charlotte, North Carolina Area”

Bye bye annoying non-individual, organized-by-last-name search results! 

And if you run into a result or two that happen to be jobs, you can simply add -inurl:jobs to your string to make them vanish.

Is This The End?

For the time being, the -inurl:dir seems to get us back to our familiar individual LinkedIn profile search results, even for current title X-Ray searches.

However, many people (including me) have been wondering for years as to if, when, and how LinkedIn would make changes to the ability to effectively search for and find specific LinkedIn profiles using Internet search engines.

The folks at LinkedIn have always known that people can use Internet search engines to find LinkedIn profiles that are not in the searcher’s LinkedIn network. It’s a byproduct of publishing profiles to the web, which LinkedIn does by default unless the user changes their account settings.

Are we seeing the beginning of LinkedIn attempting to reign in X-Ray capability? I’m not so sure – I would think if they were going to make a such a move, it would be more effective.

Perhaps they are testing the waters to see how they can continue to publish profiles to the web yet affect X-Ray search results?

Keep a weather eye on the horizon.

Strictly for the Search Geeks

Do any of my fellow sourcing hackers have any ideas as to:

1. What exactly is going on with the search results being returned and organized by first or last name?
2. What determines whether a search result is organized by first as opposed to last name?
3. Why do X-Ray searches with OR statements seem to have a higher percentage of the new search results than simple AND-style searches?

In the original LinkedIn Current Title Search: Internal vs. X-Ray post, I found that there was a large disparity in results between identical internal and external (Google X-Ray) current title searches on LinkedIn. 

At the end of the post I asked if anyone had any ideas as to where the missing 288 profiles were, why they weren’t returned using the basic Google X-Ray current title search technique, and how can you find them?

I received a few interesting and insightful responses - I will review them in this post as well as provide my own insight as to the difference in results experienced when running an internal LinkedIn search and a Google X-Ray search of LinkedIn using the same search criteria.

I’ll also show you some interesting LinkedIn search phenomena.

Does Results Sorting Matter?

Kathy Breitenbucher noticed as I did that LinkedIn seems to be taking some liberties with the “Director of Accounting” title, and she decided to sort the results by keywords rather than the default setting of “relevance” (which really isn’t relevance based on keywords, in case you didn’t know).

I decided to sort the results by keyword as well – but I did not see the result she referenced (”The first person on the list is an Executive Director, HR & Accounting”) in the first 10 pages. However, I did notice that on the main results listing, some in fact do not mention “Director of Accounting.”

For example:

However, if you click on the result to view the profile, you will notice there is some reference to “Director of Accounting:”

So be careful not to judge a search result by what is or is not displayed on the main results listing. As I discovered in all cases, even if some form of “Director of Accounting” was not present on the main results listing, when I opened each result, there was in fact at least one relevant hit of the phrase (regardless of order – more on that later).

Does LinkedIn Ignore Quotes?

Medhavi Misra believed that “…quotes are completely ignored in linkedin search and thus the number of results is more.” 

I am not so sure that LinkedIn completely ignores quotes. In every result that I reviewed during my research, there was always at least one instance in which “director” and “accounting” were within close proximity, which leads me to believe that LinkedIn is honoring some form of general phrase proximity.

On the other hand, Medhavi was very observant to notice that a search for “director of accounting” on LinkedIn also returns results with phrases like “Director – Accounting”, “Director & Accounting”, “Director, Accounting”, “Accounting Director.”

This in fact is one of the major factors that causes an internal LinkedIn search for “Director of Accounting” to return more results than a Google X-Ray search of LinkedIn for the same phrase.

However, that is only half of this particular phenomenon. 

Google is Strict, LinkedIn gets Loose

Yogesh Kumar and Irina Shamaeva both pointed out that Google seems to strictly honor phrase searching with quotation marks. In other words, when you use Google to search for “Director of Accounting,” it will only return results with the exact phrase of “Director of Accounting.”

As you can see below, LinkedIn isn’t so strict.

This is also evident on individual LinkedIn profiles.

For the most part – this is a good thing! LinkedIn is “smart” enough to realize that people can represent titles and phrases in various ways while the meaning of the concept remains intact.

LinkedIn’s flexibility with phrase searching and Google’s strict adherence to exact phrase searching likely accounts for a large portion of the missing 288 results referenced in my original post. 

Yogesh Kumar and Kameron Swinton pointed out that LinkedIn appears to ignore common words (such as of, or, at, for – as many search engines do), even if they are contained in what most people would assume is a strict exact phrase search using quotes, such as “Director of Accounting.”

Proof of this can be seen here, where the word “of” is not highlighted:

To compensate for LinkedIn’s phrase search flexibility and how it ignores common words, Yogesh suggested the following Google X-Ray search string to more closely approximate what LinkedIn is doing:

site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:in) -intitle:directory “greater new york city area” “current * * * director * accounting”

That search yields nearly 13,000 results- quite a bit more than the 393 that LinkedIn returns!

When you examine the results, you can see what’s going on here – the replacement of “of” with an asterisk [Director * Accounting] allows Google to return results with titles such as:

• Director Corporate Accounting
• Managing Director at DSZ Forensic Accounting
• Director – NAC Accounting & Planning
• Associate Director, Finance & Accounting
• Managing Director at NetWorth Tax Accounting
• Director/Vice President, Accounting & Finance
• Director Corporate Reporting & Accounting

This search actually represents an improvement on the original search of “Director of Accounting” because in addition to returning that exact phrase, it also returns results that do not match the exact phrase yet still match the intent of the search – which is to find people at the director level who oversee accounting functions.

As such, this is a wonderful example of semantic search – targeting the meaning of the concept of director level responsibility over accounting without being restricted to an exact phrase.

However, all is not perfect with this search.  Remember those 13,000 results? When I navigated through the results pages on Google to review them for accuracy and relevance, I noticed that the results stopped at page 6:

I tried running the X-Ray search in IE and Firefox and got the same results – I could not navigate past page 6, and the actual total number of results ended up being 57. A far cry from 13,000!

Any ideas as to what’s going on here?

What about Indexing?

Gov’t Recruiter took a totally different angle than anyone else who responded to my challenge. His answer as to why the Google X-Ray search returned fewer results than the equivalent search inside of LinkedIn is that ”LinkedIn indexes with its RDBMS immediately as a new profile has been created, granting LinkedIn an Instant Refresh. Google’s results are based off spiders and metatags keying and registering  typically taking 45 days to index for most search and meta search engines.”

Now, I am not certain of the accuracy of his claims of it taking around 45 days for Google to find and index pages (such as public LinkedIn profiles), but I do think he is onto something here. Certainly if someone creates a new LinkedIn profile today, it is not likely to be indexed by Google (or any search engine) in the same day and thus searchable and retreivable via Google immediately, whereas new profiles ARE instantly retrievable when searching inside of LinkedIn.

Do you have any thoughts, additional insight or facts (such as exactly how long it DOES take for Google to crawl and index a new LinkedIn profile) to share on this concept?

Overlap and Private Profiles

Irina Shamaeva offered a few ideas as to the variance in results between an internal LinkedIn search and a Google X-Ray search: 1. The results of using one, two, and three asterisks may be different, so we need to combine them all for an X-ray answer. 2. Private profiles won’t show up in Google. 3. It seems LI may decide that “director accounting” is the same as “director of accounting”; Google takes words in quotation marks as they are; am I right?

While the possibility of combining the search results from the 3 separate searches is a sound theory, when I wrote the orignal post, I carefully reviewed the results of 1, 2, and 3 asterisks in the phrase “current  */* */* * * director” and I found there to be significant overlap in the results. Thus we cannot simply add the results of the search with 1 asterisk (85) to the results of the searches with  2 and 3 asterisks (98 and 105 respectively) to explain the variance in results.

However, Irina correctly pointed out that any LinkedIn profile that is not published to the web would not be indexed and thus searchable/retrievable via a Google X-Ray search. I don’t have the stats on how many people actually change their account settings from the default/recommended “publish profile to web” to “None off,” but from my experience it is likely a small percentage of people.  Nonetheless, this is a legitimate explanation of why you may not get as many results from an X-Ray search as you would when searching within LinkedIn. 

Irina also nailed the difference in how Google and LinkedIn process phrase searching with quotation marks, as did Medhavi and Yogesh. Well done! 

My Thoughts

I enjoyed not giving away any answers in the original post. Although I was hoping to have more people try and figure out exactly why there can be such a huge difference between equivalent internal and external LinkedIn searches, I was pleased to receive insightful thoughts from a number of sharp sourcers around the world.

I have found that the best sourcers are people who are curious, analytical, investigative problem solvers. This exercise has proven something that I continually espouse – that it is critical to ask “why?” when you encounter something that doesn’t seem to work quite right, to experiment via the scientific method, and that a significant portion of learning comes from examing the results – especially for what isn’t highlighted.

In addition to what was accurately revealed by all of the people I’ve referenced in this post, I wanted to share a couple of other phenomena I encountered while exploring the differences between internal LinkedIn searches and X-Ray searches.

LinkedIn is Rebellious and Inconsistent

First, I noticed that when searching inside of LinkedIn with a phrase of “Director of Accounting” in the current title field…

…that LinkedIn would highlight one of the search terms (accounting) by itself, not in a phrase, and not even in the title section, as you can see in the “Specialties” section! What gives?

Although I clearly searched for the phrase “Director of Accounting” in the current title field, “accounting” is highlighted by itself outside of the title fields – and yet I noticed that neither the individual search terms nor the phrase “Director Accounting” were highlighted when they were in fact present elsewhere in the profile (see above). 

Anyone from LinkedIn care to explain?

LinkedIn Puts it in Reverse

Second, I also found a few examples in which LinkedIn would actually reverse the order of the keywords in the phrase “Director of Accounting,” which I found quite interesting:

LinkedIn Searches for Relevant Abbreviations

Third, LinkedIn also returned results that did not even spell out the word “Director:”

Kudos to the search team at LinkedIn – nice work!

Thank You!

Thank you to everyone who responded to my original post with thoughts and ideas! Please let me know if you can provide any additional insight to the questions I raised in this article.

So you know how to X-Ray LinkedIn, and perhaps you even know how to target current titles with an X-Ray string. However, did you know that you’re not finding all of the available matches within LinkedIn using this technique?

Did that get your attention? Would you like to know approximately how many people you might be missing when you run a current title X-Ray search of LinkedIn?

Unless you have a premium Linkedin account, you will likely have to resort to using an Internet search engine to X-Ray into LinkedIn to find and view profiles of people who are not in your network, and being able to search by current title can be extremely useful at times to reduce the number of false positive results.

While I am usually not a big fan of title searching, a large percentage of LinkedIn profiles don’t have any text entered for each work experience entry. As such, title searching becomes a necessary evil as anyone who creates a LinkedIn profile doesn’t have to enter anything in the ”position description” field, but they MUST enter a company and a title.

In this post I will show you the discrepancy between identical current title searches conducted using LinkedIn’s search interface and an X-Ray string – and it’s HUGE! At the end, I also throw in challenge for you. Are you up to it?

The Search Criteria

For this exercise, I am going to target people with a current title of “Director of Accounting” in the “Greater New York City Area.”

LinkedIn Current Title X-Ray Search

Here is a “standard” Google X-Ray search string targeting current title:

site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:in) -intitle:directory “greater new york city area” “current * director of accounting”

This yields 85 results at the time I ran the string.

Remember – the asterisk on Google is processed as a “fill in the blanks,” where it serves as a placeholder for any unknown terms. This can be 1 or more unknown terms (you cant nail Google down to a specific number on this).

In the case of the single asterisk, the current title X-Ray string appears to work because the asterisk “fills in the blank” of the bullet that separates the word “Current” from the actual title entered for the most recent position on the LinkedIn profile.

Are Two Asterisks Better Than One?

Because I am curious, I decided to see what using 2 asterisks yields:

site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:in) -intitle:directory “greater new york city area” “current * * director of accounting”

That produced 98 results at the time I ran the string.

The additional results appear to come from instances where ”Director of Accounting” is preceded by a word, such as Asst Director of Accounting, Executive Director of Accounting, Regional Director of Accounting, etc.

We’ll take those, thanks!

Are Three Asterisks the Charm?

Going one step further (hey, why not?), I decided to shoot for 3 asterisks:

site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:in) -intitle:directory “greater new york city area” “current * * * director of accounting”

That yielded 105 results at the time I ran the search.

The results gained come in the form of Google taking some liberty in interpreting my search, actually altering the exact phrase of ”Director of Accounting” with titles such as Regional Director of Finance and Accounting, National Director of Project Accounting, etc. At this point, we’re starting to mess around with the purity of the intent of the search. Close enough though?

Just to see what Google/LinkedIn made of it, I decided to shoot for 4 asterisks, which only returned 46 results at the time of the search. While we can see a few familiar and accurate results from the previous strings, you can also see things got messy, so shooting for 4 asterisks in this case brought diminishing returns, both literally and figuratively.

And Now for the Same Search Performed Inside LinkedIn

Using LinkedIn’s search interface, here is what I configured to find people with a current title of “Director of Accounting” using the zip code of 10001, and going out to a distance of 50 miles which should essentially cover the same area as the X-Ray location of “Greater New York City Area.”

Wait a minute – did I hear someone ask how I can I possibly know if a 50 mile radius of 10001 is equivalent to all of the people categorized by LinkedIn as being in the ”Greater New York City Area?” I’m glad the question was raised!

It’s actually not equivalent to ALL LinkedIn profiles with a location of “Greater New York City Area,” but it’s pretty darn close. Let me show you.

When you run that search, you should get somewhere around 348 results. That’s over 3X as many results as our best X-Ray string!

Scroll down the left rail where you see “location” and click the “+” sign:

That shows us there are AT LEAST 348 people with “Director of Accounting” as the current title on their LinkedIn profile that are also classified by LinkedIn as living within the “Greater New York City Area.”

But wait – there’s more. I decided to push the radius out to 75 miles and then check the location details at the bottom of the left rail:

Yep – we’re up to 389 results in the “Greater New York City Area,” and you can see we just started to bleed over into surrounding metro areas recognized by LinkedIn.

You’re probably not surprised to find out that I decided to push the radius out to 100 miles just to see what happened.  As it turns out, we actually squeeze out 4 more search results (393 total) for a current title of “Director of Accounting” and a location of “Greater New York City Area.”

All LinkedIn Current Title Searches are NOT Created Equal

I’m sorry if I rattled your faith in X-Ray searching LinkedIn for current titles – but this little exercise has shown quite dramatically that all LinkedIn current title searches are not created equal.

I thought you should know that you cannot run a current title X-Ray search of LinkedIn and be confident that you’re finding most of the relevant results. In fact, it appears you’d be missing the majority of the available results!

The best “standard” current title X-Ray string returned 105 results for people with a location phrase of “Greater New York City Area,” whereas we were able to scoop up 393 results of people with a current title of “Director of Accounting” and a location of “Greater New York City Area.” 

Can You Solve the Mystery?

So where ARE the missing  288 profiles, why aren’t they returned using the basic Google X-Ray current title search technique, and how can you find them?

I have some ideas. Do you?

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!

LinkedIn is one of the most searchable social networks, and with many users filing out their profiles with as much detail as a resume, LinkedIn offers the deepest occupational and professional data of any of the social media sites. As such, it is extremely important that sourcers and recruiters learn how to master all of the various ways you can search LinkedIn to find potential candidates. 

Through text and video, in this article I will show you how to extract the most value and results from LinkedIn’s search interface, X-Ray searching LinkedIn, unlocking out-of-network results, and leveraging LinkedIn’s unique advanced search operators. 

LinkedIn’s Search Interface

LinkedIn’s search interface is quite robust, supporting full Boolean logic (AND, OR, NOT) for both keyword and structured field search (current/past title, current/past company, and school), allowing you to create complex and precise search strings.  Interestingly, I haven’t hit the limit of LinkedIn’s search capability yet in terms of the maximum number of characters/words it can accept – it appears bottomless. Also of note is that even with a free LinkedIn account, you are able to save up to 3 searches.

Click the image below to watch a short video of how to use LinkedIn’s search interface effectively, how to save searches, and a demonstration of LinkedIn accepting a search string of 1000 words.

As you can see, pretty much the only ”nice-to-have” search capability missing from LinkedIn is root-word/stem search.  

X-Ray Searching LinkedIn

The vast majority of LinkedIn profiles are “public,” meaning that they are published on the web. In fact, I believe that when anyone creates a LinkedIn profile, the default/recommended setting is “Full View,” which automatically makes the profile available for Internet search engines to index them and make them available for searching. Only if someone takes the time to go into their “Account & Settings” and change their “Public Profile” to “None/off” would they not show up in web (Google, etc.) searches. 

If a LinkedIn profile is published to the web, it can be found by using Internet search engines. This means that anyone can leverage a search engine such as Google and use the site: command to X-Ray search LinkedIn for all public profiles – whether they are in that person’s network or not.

This is especially helpful for those who have relatively small networks and for those who do not pay for premium access to Linkedin. When X-Raying LinkedIn, LinkedIn doesn’t “know” who you are, so it cannot limit your search results to only those people in your network.  Also, with a free account, users are limited to viewing the first 100 results of any search when using LinkedIn’s search interface. Using a site like Google to X-Ray into LinkedIn, you can view up to 1000 results.

Exclusion-Focused X-Ray String for Google

This string is designed to find and retrieve profiles by excluding non-profile results:

site:linkedin.com -intitle:answers -intitle:updated -intitle:directory -inurl:jobs -intitle:profile -inurl:blog -intitle:groups -inurl:events

Inclusion-Focused X-Ray String for Google

Instead of trying to exclude a long list of false positive non-profile terms, this string is designed to retrieve results by targeting ”in” or “pub” in the urls of LinkedIn profiles - a Boolean Black Belt exclusive:

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

Click on the image below to view a brief video on how to effectively X-Ray search Linkedin, which details how to target local candidates, and how to search by industry:

I will leave the comparison of inclusion-focused vs. exclusion-focused X-Ray strings to another post, or to someone else feeling frisky enough to tackle it.

X-Ray String to Search for Current Title

This string employs Google’s wildcard (asterisk) operator to target the phrase on LinkedIn profiles where current title is listed:

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

Click on the image below to view a brief video on how to effectively X-Ray search LinkedIn targeting people based on current title:

Unlocking “Private” Profiles

When searching from within LinkedIn, you will inevitably at some point encounter a result of someone that is not in your LinkedIn nework - there will be no name listed:

And when you click on a result like this, instead of showing you a name, it says “Private.”

When you encounter this, do not despair – you can unlock many “private” results such as these using the X-Ray technique. This is because many “private” results are not truly private – you just can’t see the profile and the person’s name because they are not in your LinkedIn network. However, unless the person went out of their way to change their account settings to not publish their profile to the web, Internet search engines have indexed the profile and it can be both searched for and found. And when you use a search engine to X-Ray search into LinkedIn, LinkedIn has no idea who you are, so it cannot prevent you from seeing people who are not in your network.

Click on the image below for a short video that walks through 2 examples of unlocking private profiles using the X-Ray search technique:

Advanced Operators

IMPORTANT NOTE: 8/24/09 It apears that since LinkedIn implemented their “dynamic refinements,” they no longer support their advanced search operators. I’ve written them and have not received a reply at this time. I’ll keep you posted.

In addition to supporting the standard Boolean operators, LinkedIn has their own set of unique ”advanced operators” that allow you to “hand-code” search strings that control most of LinkedIn’s structured fields (current/past title, current/past company, school, industry, joined, and location) without having to use the advanced search interface. In my opinion – this is one of the coolest and most useful aspects of searching Linkedin.

Click on the image below for a brief video showing you how to take advantage of LinkedIn’s advanced operators, and how you can combine them with standard Boolean queries to find people:

Conclusion

When it comes to searching LinkedIn to find candidates, you have several options – be sure to master and employ them all! 

Here’s a breakdown of the Pros/Cons of each:

LinkedIn’s search interface:

Pros:

• Full Boolean logic in keyword, title, company, and school fields
• Ability to create insanely long and precise search strings
• Can search structured fields including current/past title, current/past company, school
• Precise location search, down to 10 mile zip code radius

Cons 

• No root-word/wildcard search (LinkedIn, are you reading this?)
• You can’t see people who aren’t in your network (by design, I know)
• You’re limited to viewing the first 100 results with a free account

X-Ray Searching LinkedIn:

Pros:

• You can see ANY public profile, whether they are in your network or not
• You can view up to 1000 results
• You can leverage configurable proximity search (via Exalead) to find people on LinkedIn based on what they DO, not just what they say

Cons 

• No support of full Boolean logic (via Google)
• Limited to 32 search terms (via Google)
• No structured field search (current/past title, current/past company, school)
• Limited to metro area search (no precise zip code search)

LinkedIn’s Advanced Operators

Pros:

• You can hand-code search strings using both Boolean operators and LinkedIn’s advanced operators to search for keywords and structured field data, controlling practically all of LinkedIn’s search fields
• All of the benefits of using LinkedIn’s search interface
• You can save your searches in Notepad and simply copy and paste them any time you need them, as pseudo-saved searches

Cons 

• All the limitations of searching within LinkedIn (can’t see out-of-network results, limited to 100 with a free account)

I recently wrote a post on how to search for candidates on Facebook where I featured all of Facebook’s “built-in” search capabilities. Shortly after publishing the article, I received a question from one of my regular readers asking why I did not include searching Facebook using the site: query modifier (as Google calls it), also known as X-Ray search.

It was a solid question, and the answer is that I purposefully did not include it in my “searching for candidates on Facebook” post, as I wanted to focus on the highest ROI search methods.  I’ve taken cracks at Facebook with the X-Ray search technique, and I’ve never been very pleased with the results. Facebook’s site architecture certainly doesn’t make it easy to X-Ray like LinkedIn and Twitter.

However, while Facebook isn’t very “X-Rayable,” you CAN get SOME relevant results from searching Facebook with the site: query modifier. What you’ll see below is a series of videos (my first!) of me driving through my attempts to X-Ray into Facebook.  

No Diving Allowed – Shallow Data!

First – let’s review the 2 major limitations of searching Facebook:

• Not every person on Facebook actually publishes location information on their profile
• Many people on Facebook do not include occupational information on their profile

Now Let’s Get to X-Raying!

Let’s try and search for people who may be accountants in the NY area. I’m choosing to shoot for a mention of “CPA” or the title “Accountant” – hoping Facebookers who are CPA’s/Accountants might mention one of these terms on their Facebook profile/page. I’m also going to shoot for “New York” or “NY,” hoping to catch all of the various ways someone from NY might mention that they’re from NY on their Facebook profile. 

X-Ray search #1  site:facebook.com (”accountant” OR CPA) (”new york” OR NY)

Click here if you’d like to examine the 701 results yourself 

As you can see from examining the first 10 results of our first X-Ray of Facebook, you can get a wide variety in the types of results you will get returned in your search: people, pages, and groups; local and non-local results; and qualified and unqualified potential candidates.

Targeting “People”

Taking a hint from the URL of the first result returned by our first X-Ray search attempt:

- Let’s target pages that mention the word “people” in the URL in an attempt to avoid groups and pages and zero-in on people.  While Facebook groups and pages can be great sources of human captial, we have no control over where the group members or fans actually live – which is often a critical factor when searching for candidates in an attempt to fill or build a pipeline for specific positions.

X-Ray search #2  site:facebook.com (”accountant” OR CPA) (”new york” OR NY) inurl:people

Click here to peruse the 90 results  

Targeting the word “people” in the url definitely helped narrow the results down to individual Facebook members, and also produced a number of promising results, including people who appear to at least meet our basic qualifications (CPA/Accountant) and live in the NY metro area.

Digging Deeper Into Result #10

That was a good investigative sourcing exercise of exploring what appeared to be a dead-end or false positive result that actually led to uncovering a large group of 500+ fans of the New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants. 

Conclusion

While Facebook still ranks as the least searchable of the “Big 3″ social media sites (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook), it’s the biggest of the 3 by a wide margin, with over 175,000,000 people and growing rapidly. As such, if you’re a sourcer or recruiter – you simply can’t ignore Facebook’s vast repository of human capital.  One way of tapping into that talent pool is by using the X-Ray search technique.

It’s easy to get spoiled by X-Raying LinkedIn or Twitter. In comparison, X-Raying Facebook can be frustrating. However, as I’ve shown you – while you will run into your fair share of false positive results of people who are not qualified for your needs – you CAN find and locate candidates on Facebook who are likely to be qualified for AND live in the same metro area as your hiring needs by leveraging the site: query modifier and the X-Ray search technique.

While there is a growing number of recruiting professionals and organizations who pay for premium access to LinkedIn, there is still a large number of people who leverage LinkedIn with a free or “Personal” account.

If you’re on the fence about paying for increased access to LinkedIn, you’re reading the right post. I’m going to compare searching LinkedIn from the “inside” with a free “Personal” account using LinkedIn’s new people search interface with searching LinkedIn from the “outside” using Google and the x-ray technique. If you are not familiar with the x-ray search technique, it will be covered in depth with examples later in this post.

FREE LINKEDIN SEARCH – FROM THE “INSIDE”

There are actually a number of different ways and places to search for people on Linkedin. The more powerful methods involve #1 LinkedIn’s advanced search interface and  #2 “Hand-coding” search strings using LinkedIn’s advanced search operators.

Controlling Candidate Variables

Both of those methods allow you to control critical candidate variables such as current and/or past employer, current and/or past title, industry, and location via zip code radius search. During or after you configure your search, you also have the option to sort results by relevance, relationship, relationship + recommendations, and keyword match/count.

Search Limits

Once you execute your results, you can see the total number of results – but some people are not aware of the fact that with a free account, you are limited to viewing the first 100 results. Even if your search returns 12,947 results, when you try clicking on page 11 of the results, you will see this: 

In and Out of Network Results

In the past, when searching inside of LinkedIn, users were limited to seeing ONLY results of people who are within their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree connections. Now, even users with a free account can see both a mix of people inside and outside of their personal network.

However, with a free account, results that are outside of your network do not show a name, are titled “private,” and the profiles have limited information. You must have a premium account to be able to view some/all out of network results and see expanded profiles of out of network results.

Boolean Search Capability

Kudos to LinkedIn for supporting most Boolean search operators and functionality. LinkedIn’s search interface supports:

• Implied AND: While you can type AND, you don’t have to – any space is seen as an AND (like Google) 
• OR: You can craft Boolean search strings with multiple OR statements, enclosed by parentheses
• NOT: You can use the NOT operator to limit your results and exclude search terms
• Exact Phrases: You can use quotation marks to denote exact phrases of 2 or more words

java NOT recruiter (Lead OR led OR senior) NOT (.Net OR C#) (AJAX OR Struts) NOT (manager OR director)

When I tried to find out exactly HOW long of a Boolean search string LinkedIn will accept, I lost patience after cramming 316,638 characters into the search bar. No, I am not joking -try it yourself. I got tired of holding a letter down on my keyboard for several minutes. Then I even started copying and pasting large blocks (entire pages) of text into the search bar. Needless to say, LinkedIn will definitely take more than Google’s puny limit of 32 search terms (sorry Google), and Monster’s respectable limit of 500 characters with spaces.

Sadly, LinkedIn does not appear to support any form of root-word or stem searching. I tried using the asterisk to test this functionality, and I was fooled a couple of time when using terms like admin* or manag*. When I tried: unix linux scrip*, scrip* is definitely not pulling script, scripting, scripts, etc.

Reference Search

With a free account, while you can RUN a reference search, you cannot VIEW the results of a reference search:

Saved Searches

A “Personal” LinkedIn account will get you 3 saved searches.

Although not an automated saved search, you can create and save your LinkedIn searches in Notepad or Word and copy and paste them into LinkedIn’s search bar.

You can even create and save searches that incorporate and control when LinkedIn members have joined LinkedIn. For example – here is a search looking for someone who is currently working at Google, with a current title of engineer, who has joined in the last month:

ccompany:google ctitle:engineer joined:m

Results:

You could save that search string in Notepad or Word and copy and paste it into LinkedIn every month to find people who have recently joined LinkedIn in the past month.

FREE LINKEDIN SEARCH – FROM THE “OUTSIDE”

The way to search LinkedIn from the “outside” is to use an Internet search engine such as Google and employ the site: command to tell Google to search and return results only from the LinkedIn domain. This is often referred to as an “x-ray” search, because the search engine is only focusing it’s search “powers” on pages it has indexed from the site/domain you specify. 

For example, enter this into Google:

site:linkedin.com java -”manager” -”director” (~develop | ~design) (Ajax | Struts) Weblogic -recruiter (inurl:pub | inurl:in) -intitle:directory

You can see from the results page that every single result comes from www.linkedin.com

The vast majority of LinkedIn members/users do choose to publish their LinkedIn profile to the web, which then enables search engines like Google to index them and allows you to search for and retrieve them.

Controlling Candidate Variables

When using the site: command to x-ray search LinkedIn, you do not have control over all of the candidate variables that you do when you search from within LinkedIn.

You can control, for the most part, current titles. For example:

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

However, I am not aware of any reliable way to control past company experience and avoid current experience at a specific employer. Additionally, there does not appear to be a way to control current or past company experience. Searching for a specific company name will yield results of people who have worked at that target company at some point in their career, but not necessarily only in their current or past experience.

Location

You can search for candidates from a specific metro area. For example:

site:linkedin.com “current * project manager” (inurl:pub | inurl:in) -intitle:directory “greater chicago area”

However, there is no way to refine your search by zip code radius as you can using LinkedIn’s search interface.

Industry

You can use Google and the site:command to search LinkedIn and return results of people who have identified themselves as working in a particular industry. For example, let’s pick “Oil & Energy” from LinkedIn’s industry list:

site:linkedin.com “current * project manager” (inurl:pub | inurl:in) -intitle:directory “greater chicago area” “Oil & Energy”

Search Limits

When using the site: command to search LinkedIn, you can review up to 1000 results – 10X the number you can with a LinkedIn “Personal” account. The limit is actually imposed by Google.  Even if you get 142,389 total results, you can’t view any results past 1000 (most of the time you can’t even view the 1000th). Try for yourself.

In and Out of Network Results

A HUGE benefit to x-ray searching LinkedIn through an Internet search engine is that you can retrieve and view ANY public profile, whether it’s in or out of your network. Read this post for a thorough look at how to take a nameless ”out of network” result you find from searching within LinkedIn and find it with the name and full profile using Google.

Boolean Search Capability 

When searching LinkedIn via an Internet search engine, you are limited to the Boolean operators of the search engine, not LinkedIn. While most Internet search engines, including Google, cannot match LinkedIn’s Boolean search capability or capacity, you CAN effectively create searches to find pretty much anything you need when performing and x-ray search of Linkedin. 

Reference Search

There does not appear to be any reliable way to perform a LinkedIn reference search for a specific company using an Internet search engine. 

Saved Searches

Using Google, you can create a form of “saved search” of LinkedIn using Google’s Alerts.

With Google Alerts, you can create search strings to x-ray LinkedIn and return results to your email on an “as-it-happens,” once a day, or weekly basis. From the LinkedIn x-ray Google Alerts I have created, you won’t get very many results if your search strings are highly targeted – typically only when a profile has been updated or newly created.

CONCLUSION

Using LinkedIn’s search interface has the benefits of showing you who you are connected to, the ability to sort your results in a variety of ways, and the ability to precisely control many critical candidate variables, such as current/past company experience, current/past title, and location down to a 10 mile radius. Additionally, LinkedIn’s search interface supports relatively complex Boolean search strings for highly specific and targeted searching. However, with a free/”personal” account, you are limited to reviewing 100 results, and results out of your network are not viewable.

X-ray searching LinkedIn using Google and the site: command has the benefits of returning ALL public profiles on LinkedIn that match your search, whether they are in your network or not – and you can view up to 1000. Additionally, using Google to search LinkedIn allows you to search for and control specific industry experience as you can from within LinkedIn. However, when searching LinkedIn with the x-ray technique, you cannot sort your results as you can in LinkedIn, you cannot search by when people have joined LinkedIn, you’re limited to Google’s Boolean search capability and 32 search term limit, and you do not have precise control over current employer or location beyond major metro area (typically a 50 mile radius).

Thankfully when you have a free “Personal” account with LinkedIn, you can take advantage of the best of both worlds – searching LinkedIn from the inside and the outside. If you have a free account and you’re thinking about upgrading to a premium account, be sure to carefully consider whether or not the additional features gained are worth the price considering what you can do for free.