#Tip: Searching Internationally

I’d like to share a tip on how to narrow your search down to the profiles of professionals in a given country. My examples will be LinkedIn-X-ray-based, but these are applicable to other types of searches.

Some Americans may not even know that, but outside of the US Google offer to narrow the searches down to the pages in the local country only. If the main language in the  country is not English, there’s yet another option to look only for pages in that language. These options are available under the “web” underlined link if you select search tools.

We can take advantage of this, traveling “virtually” by switching to a given local, country-specific Google search page, such as http://www.google.com.au/ or http://www.google.co.uk/ or http://www.google.hu/ (etc).

In particular, switching to a country-based Google is a perfect tool to X-ray LinkedIn profiles local to the country.

Take a look at the following.

Here’s another example:

 

To continue searching in this cool way, we’ll have to be OK searching in a foreign language. Actually, not really, since the Google translate is there to help. Take a look at this Hungarian-Google search and notice the option above the page to translate it into English:

Of course,

1. searching in Hungary (the selected option) and translating to English
2. searching for pages in Hungarian (the other option) and translating to English
3. searching for pages in English

…are three very different options. Let’s not get lost! At this point the goal was to search in Hungary.

Here’s a nice tip sheet with the local Google search URLs.

I will end with a note for my fellow Americans: if you ask to switch to searching in English, then the “local” country and language options will be gone, as if you are back in the US. Stay with the foreign-language search and use the Google translation to keep your options open.