Change Your Search Strings for 2016

For some changes in searching on Social Networks in 2015, please check out my previous post –  Searching Social Media Got Harder in 2015.

Below I have described some changes that are going to happen in Googling early in 2016. These are easy to predict: when a major site, such as LinkedIn or Google-Plus, changes the structure (title, URL, and content) of the public profile pages, the search strings will follow – as soon as Googlebot catches up with the new formats.

So here’s heads-up on some new X-Ray Boolean search string templates for 2016:

1. If you haven’t noticed, all public LinkedIn profiles now have the linkedin.com/in piece. There are no /pub profiles any longer. That means that X-Ray template site:linkedin.com/in OR site:linkedin.com/pub -pub.dir (or this version –  site:linkedin.com inurl:in OR inur:pub -inurl:dir) can soon become much simpler – just site:linkedin.com/in should work.
2. LinkedIn is creating new publicly accessible subdomains and directories, worth exploring – including topics and related skills and Lists.
3. The redesigned public Google-Plus profiles have less info than before. As part of that, you cannot search for women using the phrase “have her in circles”, since it is no longer there.
4. Google search continues to grow it’s semantic features, “understands” more searches. (Good to keep in mind and watch its progression. However, it will be a while before Google will automate sourcing for professionals, so we should feel safe at work for now!)
5. The still-present #1 syntax rule in Google’s official help, the plus + searches for Google+ pages, no longer works (just try it and you will see).
6. Anything YOU want to add to the list?

>>> Keep up-to-date, search deeper, and be more productive in 2016 by pre-ordering the upcoming

“300 Best Boolean Strings”.

Feeling adventurous? Try yourself out in the 2015 End of the Year Contest and you may win the “300 Strings”.