Due to the just-introduced Commercial Use Limit on Search, many LinkedIn members are hitting the search quota for the month in the first day or two of January 2015 – and have to wait another month to search again. LinkedIn didn’t say how many searches are “too many”; the experience shows it’s around sixty searches for one month.
I find limiting the search for unpaid accounts reasonable. It’s not new; a number of commercial search system have similar limitations.
If you are struggling with the new limits on searching and are not ready to go with a paid account yet:
1) There are a number of ways to search that are not counted in the monthly quota. These ways are no substitute for the advanced member search, but can be quite useful. This includes:
- Alumni Search
- Field of Study Explorer
- Group Member Search
- Contact Search (unfortunately, really buggy; importing to contacts is also buggy, has mostly stopped working)
- Look at “People Also Viewed”
2) Naturally, Googling for LinkedIn profiles (“X-Raying”) remains unlimited!
Use this Custom Search Engine to X-Ray LinkedIn:
(I have updated the Search Engine URL to provide up to 1,000 results.) Here are some example uses:
- “.Net developer at” (targeting .Net Developers)
- Spanish “native or bilingual” (targeting bilingual English-Spanish members)
- RN “Greater New York City Area” (targeting Registered Nurses in the NYC Area)
- intitle:MBA (members listing MBA as part of the last name)
- inurl:uk (members in the UK)
Enjoy!
Want to search like a Pro? Don’t miss the Advanced Sourcing DOUBLE-Webinar next Tuesday and Wednesday Jan 13/14. The seats are going fast!