The Plus Came Back

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We have suspected that Google killed its Plus operator for a reason. The Plus Came Back came back the very next day (almost), and in a very clever way:  Anyone can create a Google+ business page here: https://plus.google.com/pages/create (here’s ours). When a search on Google starts with a + it will search those pages on Google+. This type of search is called …

The PLUS Operator Has Been Replaced

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This seems like a big piece of news. When you try to use the operator + (meaning, give me the exact term), you now get this message: The + operator has been replaced. To search for an exact word or phrase, use double quotation marks The help page reflects the changes. It has been somewhat awkward that Google introduced Google-Plus and their PLUS operator …

Custom Search Engine: Hidden Profiles

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Here’s a Custom Search Engine I have created, “Hidden Profiles”. This search engine has become popular due to appearing up high for a Google search for “hidden profiles.” The Custom Search Engine looks for profiles across many different sites and has refinements for several social networks. Please check it out and let me know what you think. Another Custom Search …

Blekko /people

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My business partner Julia Tverskaya and I had the pleasure of chatting with the CTO of Blekko Greg Lindahl at Sourcecon last week. Greg’s presentation was the one that we both enjoyed the most! Why should sourcers check out Blekko? Here are some reasons. Blekko is a search engine that has made creating custom search engines its major feature. They are …

Webinar: Uncovering Hidden Profiles

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Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/402008986 If you are one of the 97% of sourcers and recruiters who search beyond job boards, chances are that you search for online profiles of potential candidates and business connections on a daily basis.There’s a problem with navigating online profiles, since social networks are all different, have different search syntax …

The Anatomy of a Search

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A Boolean search string in a search engine has its structure. Its elements are: keywords, key phrases in quotation marks, operators (like site:), and special characters (like “*” in Google). Unfortunately, this structure has little to do with what we have in mind when we search; so the challenge is to translate our search for people with certain professional background …

Numbers

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This site went over 100K+ hits this week… …which has prompted me to take a look at some other statistics. These nice numbers below show the growing importance of Sourcing and Internet research in our work. I have created the sites below in the last two years: http://booleanstrings.com – 100K hits LinkedIn Group (very active!) Boolean Strings: 11,000+ members. New discussions daily. Big …

Finding Company Email Patterns

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Given a company domain name company.com, and the first and the last name of a person, we can construct the address – if the company follows a certain pattern in email addresses (such as fist-dot-last-at-company.com). How can we find out what the pattern might be? 1. What NOT to do Do NOT search on Google for “*@company.com” You may be lucky and find …

Find Everything Using Chrome

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I find it a bit annoying when Google search decides to omit similar results – which it does most of the time! To control this behavior, we need to go to the last page with the results and click the link “repeat the search with the omitted results included”. There’s a shortcut to doing this, which is adding &filter=0 to your …

Today’s Sourcing Contest/Quiz!

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  Announcing a Sourcing Contest/Quiz. (It’s not easy!) Please post your answers as replies to this post. Replying only to some questions, and replying several times is allowed. Repeating someone’s correct answer is fine but will score lower, unless you add some nice explanations or examples. (So the sooner you get some answers in, the more advantage you have!) Repeating …