New! #LinkedIn Shows Structured Profile Data on the Surface Web

This is recent: LinkedIn has exposed more of its data to search engines than before, thus allowing us to do some people search using X-ray (i.e. the operator site:). I am talking about a large set of data below the URL “linkedin.com/title” (please note: “title” here is simply part of the URL – not an operator or a keyword).

To see what I’m pointing to, first, log out of your LinkedIn account. Next, try a search like this, for example:

site:linkedin.com/title “mac developer” (or add your own keywords instead of “mac developer”).

You will see pages and pages of results that are lists of people with URLs like this

www.linkedin.com/title/team-lead/at-softvision, i.e.

www.linkedin.com/title/<title keywords>/at-<company-name>

And, of course, people who are your third level connections or are outside your network will be shown with their full names and info included.

This give us an opportunity to explore titles and explore lists of people at a certain company.

Here’s an example: site:linkedin.com/title inurl:at-ibm

Here’s another example: site:linkedin.com/title/software-developer

Cool, isn’t it?