In this post, I will explain how to locate the correct work email address in the case when a company uses a pattern including the middle initial (e.g. [email protected]). As an example, ConocoPhillips and JPMorgan use that format. Middle initials are often hidden from public profiles, and it is not always easy to look them up.

Just to mention a quick way to Google for email addresses that use the middle initial. Use this type of search – put the asterisk instead of the unknown initial:

• “ed.*[email protected]”
• “anne.*[email protected]”

If Googling doesn’t bring results, here’s a way that takes a bit longer.  This method can also be used to find the correct email address for anyone, starting with of a list of email permutations.

First, generate a list of variations (permutations) of the address. Here is a quick example – a list of email variations in an Excel file. You can also use any existing email permutator.

Next, populate a Yahoo-CSV-formatted file with the list.

Import the file it to your LinkedIn Contacts (scroll down to this icon):

Shortly after uploading, here is what you will see in the “Contacts” sorted by “new”. (I am using the example Yahoo CSV list):

Looking at this list of contacts – it’s pretty clear what the correct address is. Right? (You can download the example CSV file and try yourself).

That’s it, folks!

If you would like to learn a variety of efficient tools and tips for looking up contact information, sign up for our Interactive Workshop How To Find Contact Info; today’s session was sold out, and the next is on is January 5, 2016.

I am excited to announce the upcoming release of the “300 Best Boolean Strings”. It has been in the works for the last two years, as I have been saving my searches created during sourcing projects, in response to our student’s questions, and to demonstrate various search hacks in webinars.

“300 Best Boolean Strings” is an e-book with a collection of over three hundred best Boolean search strings and templates, along with explanations, and detailed, up-to-date search tip sheets.

I have included strings for X-Raying data-rich sites and Social Networks, sourcing for professional profiles, lists with contact information, data verification… you name it! The 300 Strings cover advanced search on Google, other search engines, and major Social Networks, for a large variety of industries, positions, and locations. Another part of the publication is a Mega Tip Sheet with the latest Boolean search syntax. Finally, I have included search strings that for using in conjunction with over twenty Custom Search Engines that I have constructed.

“300 best Boolean Strings” can serve as a tutorial, a sourcing tool, and a reference guide to advanced searching.

Release Date: the publication will be available by mid-January 2016.

Interested? Pre-order “300 Strings” at the introductory price of only $49

In a recent post, I have described a great productivity tool, Talent Pipeline, available to those who have a LinkedIn Recruiter subscription.

It’s little-known, but those without a Recruiter subscription can use LinkedIn functionality similar to Talent Pipeline. It is available from any personal account, Basic and Business alike. Just like with the Recruiter Pipeline tool, you can upload a list of email addresses and search within the profiles identified as belonging to LinkedIn members.

To take advantage of this function, first, paste the collected email addresses into a Yahoo-CSV-formatted file. Upload the file using the Yahoo-CSV upload button at the bottom of the page in LinkedIn Contacts:

It takes a bit of time to sync the profiles with the email list. When LinkedIn finishes uploading, you will see the list of identified profiles. It would look like this:

The purple Yahoo logo on the right shows the “source” for contacts; the grayed-out LinkedIn logo points to identified profiles that are not your connections.

You can then review the uploaded profiles. Here is a link to the profiles imported from a Yahoo CSV format, sorted by “new”. It will work for you shortly after you upload the file. You can now review the list and contact those members whose profiles look promising. Since the profiles already contain contact information, there’s a choice of an InMail and an email for reaching out. Uploading emails, identifying members, with an ability to message comes pretty close to similar functionality in the Pipeline tool! Try it out and let me know how it works for you.

-Irina

P.S. If you’d also like to search within the uploaded data vs. reviewing it, it’s not straightforward. The current search functionality in the Contacts doesn’t allow to combine search by several facets. We can’t search for a company, title, and location at the same time. (There is an unofficial link that will still allow to do advanced searches.)

To catch up on a variety of ways to source LinkedIn, including detailed explanations and examples of working this little-known yet very useful functionality, sign up for our webinar – Maximize ROI on Linkedin (last chance this year!) – Wednesday, November 18, with an optional practice on Thursday, November 19. (I will share the advanced search link at the webinar as well.) Seating is limited.

Recruiters like very long Boolean search strings. Why? It seems that the more synonyms and keyword variations you include, in long OR statements, the better control you get over the results and the more relevant results you will find. It’s common to run searches on Google that push the 32 keywords limit.

The truth is, this approach used to work well, but no longer does. Simple searches (and varied simple searches, run one after another) do better than searches with long OR statements.

Let’s take a look at a simple example and compare the search results for a string that spells out synonyms vs. a string that doesn’t.

Long Boolean String: resume filetype:PDF (CPA OR “certified public accountant”) (PwC OR PricewaterhouseCoopers) tax houston

Short Boolean String: resume filetype:PDF CPA PwC tax houston

Here’s what the searches look like:

In theory, the string with OR’s (the one on the left) should provide more results, but obviously, this theory is outdated!

In many cases, there’s no need to include OR statements in Google searches because Google knows about synonyms and keyword variations and will include them automatically. If you search for CPA, it will also search for “certified public accountant”. Remembering that would allow to shrink many favorite saved and reused strings to fewer keywords (and better readability).

Not only including long OR statements doesn’t help, because Google would search for synonyms anyway, it may hurt the search. It seems that Google is increasingly “disliking” complex searches and does less than stellar job providing relevant search results. You can think about it this way: when we give Google the space to make sense of the query (vs. controlling the query with overly complex syntax), Google works harder.

I will go into a deeper exploration of the matter in a future post; here’s just one observation regarding the numbers of results. As we know, Google never provides over 1,000 results and usually caps the number of results at a lower number; it would show 600 or even 300 results and stop there. For longer, complex search strings Google often decides to stop at a smaller number of results. You think you are covering every keyword possibility and should be getting more results, but you are getting fewer results instead. (Oh, and getting more captchas, too…)

No question about it, Google Boolean search can produce fantastic search results; it’s just that the search style we use needs to be different than ten years ago.

I am about to describe ways to search the Internet that you likely have never used. Please be patient; I need to start with some background, to explain how this works. Read on.

There is a difference we face in searching within a database vs. searching the Internet. In a database, we access structured data, i.e. records with predefined fields, and can do a faceted search. As an example, in the LinkedIn advanced people search, we can search for the name, title, company, and location. Web pages, on the other hand, have titles, URLs, content – and not much else (or so it seems!). A web page content is unstructured data, and it’s much harder to search.  Those of us, who are familiar with advanced search syntax, create Boolean Strings based on web pages’ patterns, to try and find specific kinds of data within the pages.

As an example, we use advanced search syntax or Custom Search Engines to Google for LinkedIn profiles. That searching approach is based on the profiles’ URL structure and helps to see only profiles in the results. Then, to narrow down to job titles, companies, and locations, we use additional advanced search syntax, and often with only so much precision.

Most web pages have no structure to rely on for searching. However, many sites and pages – LinkedIn public profiles included – do have some structured data that is hidden from the viewer but is “seen” and collected by Googlebot. To view that hidden structured data of a page, paste the page URL into Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. Take a look at various Social Network profiles in the Tool and you will see varying amounts of hidden structured data in public profiles – on LinkedIn, Google-Plus (of course!), Meetup, Github, and many other sites. Some hidden structured data follows the standard in Schema.org; some sites use other more-or-less standard ways to name data and the fields.

Google takes advantage of the hidden structured data, which it collects, by giving us rich previews (“snippets”) of search results. As an example, if we Google for LinkedIn profiles, previews will display taglines and locations underneath the profile links – those two pieces of information are that kind of data:

Please join me for a new webinar on Custom Search Engines.

Google’s Custom Search Engines (CSEs) have long been a favorite tool for experts searching the Internet. CSEs benefit researchers in many ways: by providing a simple User Interface and lessening the need for advanced Boolean operators; expanding the limits of Google’s search capabilities; and eliminating annoying “captcha”s triggered by complex searches.

Some of the advanced features of CSEs may require a technical background, but anyone can create simple CSEs to make life easier for them and their team. In fact, some useful, specialized CSEs can be built from scratch in a matter of minutes.

Join me for an informative webinar about the creation and use of Custom Search Engines. In my presentation, I will go beyond the basic CSE-building rules, to include some simple to use CSE “hacks” to help stretch your research further.

I will also share more than a dozen of CSEs I have created, along with the steps I used to build them.

Who should attend: Sourcers, Recruiters, Researchers, and everyone who searches the Internet and wants to create CSE’s for themselves and their teams. Note: we expect the attendees to be familiar with the Boolean search syntax on Google.

Takeaways: A library of CSE’s for your research and new skills for building CSEs.

Lecture– October 28th (Wednesday) at 9 AM PDT/noon EDT.
Hands-On Practice (optional) – October 29th (Thursday) at 9 AM PDT/noon EDT.

Seating is limited.

To sign up, please visit our training site.

The recent document Google’s Advanced Search Operators by @dmrussell has a nice, compact overview of Google search operators.  Since the author works at Google, it’s also a reliable source – make a note of it!

Most of the content is not new for those of us familiar with the advanced Boolean search syntax; but one part, at the very end, grabbed my attention. I’ll copy it here, for your convenience:

<quote> Stars in site search.

A search like [ site:*.law.*.edu ] will find all of the .EDU sites with “.law” in the domain name.  

Also try:  [ site:*.nyc.gov ] will match all of the NYC.gov sites with a subdomain.  

Also:  [ site:*.nasa.*  inurl:education ] gives lots of good clues about education sites at NASA.

<end-of-quote>

As we know, the asterisk (or star) can be used instead of a keyword, as a “fill in the blanks” operator. This is the first time though that I see documentation on using the asterisk * in combination with the site: operator. 

It remains somewhat unclear how it works – i.e. what the exact rules are using the asterisk along with the site:

These searches are a little different than those in Dan’s examples, but they do work:

• site:plus.google.com/*/about full stack engineer (find G+ profiles)
• site:plus.google.com/*/posts biomedical data science (find G+ posts)
• site:linkedin.com/in OR site:linkedin.com/pub -site:site:linkedin.com/*/*/* vp operations mining and metals (excluding directories)
• site:linkedin.com/in/*/fr OR site:linkedin.com/pub/*/fr (profiles in French for those members whose main profile is in English or another language, not French; open the results in an incognito window)
• site:twitter.com/*/lists social media manager (searching for Twitter lists)

In several of the above examples, using site: vs. inurl: allows to reach better precision – e.g.

site:plus.google.com/*/about

works better (and looks nicer) than

site:plus.google.com inurl:about.

Further, the following searches, though they do not follow the exact syntax in Dan’s document, also work:

• site:linkedin.com/title/*at-walmart (find job titles at Walmart)
• site:com/*resume graphic designer portfolio
• site:*directory.* CPA
• site:*.nasa.*/*education.

(However, for example, this string won’t work: site:*.nasa.*/education*)

If you play with this, I’d be curious to hear what you discover. (Be aware of a likely Google captcha attack on you.)

P.S. Please note that in response to my post (this one that you are reading), Dan has updated the document Google’s Advanced Search Operators with extra details; see those at the end of the document. I am still not sure we have the full picture though.

LinkedIn is in the middle of switching all groups to either Standard or Unlisted. My previous post addresses what it means to us as group members and moderators.

Not to be missed! As the switch happens, LinkedIn assigns its best guess to be either in the unlisted or standard categories for each group. Moderators can change the category; many won’t. The previously “private” (closed) groups used to be visible on the members’ public profiles. That allowed us to Google (X-Ray) for group members for the groups we don’t belong to.

Obviously, this is a shrinking opportunity. As the Group change happens, we can still see Google still finding the group members for the now-unlisted groups, up until the Googlebot visits the profiles again. But the public profiles have stopped showing that membership in unlisted groups.

Here is just one example: this group, “Business Intelligence Professionals (BI, Big Data, Analytics)” has become unlisted. You will not be able to find it in the LinkedIn group search.

However, as of today, Google still remembers who is a member of the group. Not for too long!

Additionally, as you might have noticed if you X-ray LinkedIn, we can’t ask Google for a cached LinkedIn profile.

This group membership information will be visible in Google for a very short time.

P.S. Don’t tell anybody, but   the unlisted groups are still listed in the Groups Directory.

There are blogs, explanations, and heated discussions about the upcoming changes in LinkedIn groups. Here are some positive news: members will be able to post images and “talk” to each other by typing each other’s names. Those are welcome Social Media additions, already common on other platforms.

I have also heard, from a reliable source, that LinkedIn will raise the limit of groups a member can belong to, from 50 to 100. Fantastic!

Some of the changes, however, do not feel positive and make group moderators worry. Here are two significant changes regarding sharing content and groups’ moderation:

(1) No more shared content 

Previously, those who are not group members could still review posts on “open groups”. In fact, you didn’t even need to log in to LinkedIn to read that content. Some Google searches brought up relevant content from groups. Enthusiastic members and moderators could share a link to a post outside the group and invite others to join the discussion. None of the above will be possible, starting a few days from now.

As a side note, that seems like an odd decision given that LinkedIn has been enthusiastic about creating and sharing public (Googlable) content. Examples of the growing public content include the publishing system; the “title” pages; and the topic/skill pages, to name a few categories. Hiding the group content is going in the opposite direction.

Outcome: I anticipate that less traffic will be drawn to groups with good content. It may be harder to keep groups interactive.

(2) “Standard” groups allow only after-the-fact moderation

If you haven’t moderated a large group, you may not appreciate the work behind the scenes to keep the group on target. With the new rules, to quote a fellow moderator:

“as I read the changes, we lose control of our membership, we lose control over what gets published, we are left to clean up AFTER people get in and after discussions are published”.

As an illustration, at times, while the moderator is away, just one member can flood a group with dozens of (fake or real) invited profiles, all posting spam. Cleaning up the group after the fact may be labor-intensive. And, even if spam is visible for a short time, for those to happen to see it, it makes the group unattractive.

Outcome:  Due to the lack of spam protection, “Standard” is an inferior option for a group. Group moderators, myself included, currently see making the groups “Unlisted” as the only remaining option to keep the good content and interaction. We can still share the fact of the groups’ existence with others but will have control over spammers before they post spam, not after. With an unlisted group, all the responsibility of adding people to the group is on the moderators; it seems to be limiting but may work out.

I do hope to be able to make our most popular group Boolean Strings – The Internet Sourcing Community “unlisted” while keeping it open and easy to join for all who wish to participate.

Given the changes in Groups’ functionality, many moderators are looking for alternatives.

In these times of uncertainty we are glad to have the public, independent Boolean Strings Social Network and recommend our LinkedIn Boolean Strings members join it if they haven’t. Today’s message to the Boolean group should be live for a few days, and then will stop working.

With all the changes, I find LinkedIn to remain an incredible source for Sourcing professional backgrounds; it may remain a place to discuss Sourcing too – we’ll see!