Mini-contest #2: Hunt for a Public Profile on LinkedIn

[Irina Shamaeva]

The first 3 people who find the person's public URL - or prove that the person is hiding his/her profile from Google - get a pass to the webinar LinkedIn Profiles: an In-Depth Look on June 8th

Thanks to Glen Cathey for giving me an idea and providing the screenshot for this contest! 

[Sandra L. Padbury]

String: site:linkedin.com Partner KPMG Washington DC

Sandra L. Padbury said:

Laura Odell
http://www.linkedin.com/in/lauraodell

Sandra Padbury

[Sarang Brahme]

Irina,

Typically profiles have different views in Linkedin website and as stand-alone web pages from Google. In stand-alone web pages we search via Google do not have all the information from the actual profile.

In this case, URL is
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/menachem-ely/0/b34/a04

If you view this in Linkedin - it shows up normally with all the info. However, in Google - it only shows location and industry. Hence, other details like job title are not visible in Google profile.

To find this profile - we can't put job title. We would have to put location and industry - then go through all the results to find needle in a haystack.

site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:med OR inurl:in) "Washington D.C. Metro Area" "legal services" -inurl:dir -inurl:jobs -inurl:events

Trick here is to understand the difference between Linkedin web page in Google and actual page.

[Irina Shamaeva]

Thanks, Sarang. Yes, this profile is the one in question, and your ideas sound right to me. The Google string you have provided brings too many results though - over 1,000. Can we do better?

Sarang Brahme said:

Irina,

Typically profiles have different views in Linkedin website and as stand-alone web pages from Google. In stand-alone web pages we search via Google do not have all the information from the actual profile.

In this case, URL is
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/menachem-ely/0/b34/a04

If you view this in Linkedin - it shows up normally with all the info. However, in Google - it only shows location and industry. Hence, other details like job title are not visible in Google profile.

To find this profile - we can't put job title. We would have to put location and industry - then go through all the results to find needle in a haystack.

site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:med OR inurl:in) "Washington D.C. Metro Area" "legal services" -inurl:dir -inurl:jobs -inurl:events

Trick here is to understand the difference between Linkedin web page in Google and actual page.

[Ruth-Dinaz Sarkari]

I am looking forward to the webinar Irina, thanks!! I would really like to understand the difference as I don't get the technicalities behind the scene in all the different views between Google and LI as Sarang rightly states.

Since this one is driving me nuts as to why/why not it will appear in Google am at it again!! Tweaking Sarang's string futher to narrow down with KPMG and variations of title with owner/partner my results have varied between 43 - 98 but still do not come up with a single link that could be him!! All the results using this string and tweaked versions have names. So, Irina -I will wait for you to open Pandora's box on June 8th

site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:med OR inurl:in) KPMG "current * partner" "Washington D.C. Metro Area" -inurl:dir -inurl:jobs -inurl:events

Folks - Irina's webinars are fabulous - she makes you think and work through it. If you know what/how then you can always replicate the logic. Am not saying this because I got a free pass (yeah :-) ) but because I have attended a few other Irina sessions.
Thanks!



Irina Shamaeva said:

Thanks, Sarang. Yes, this profile is the one in question, and your ideas sound right to me. The Google string you have provided brings too many results though - over 1,000. Can we do better?

Sarang Brahme said:

Irina,

Typically profiles have different views in Linkedin website and as stand-alone web pages from Google. In stand-alone web pages we search via Google do not have all the information from the actual profile.

In this case, URL is
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/menachem-ely/0/b34/a04

If you view this in Linkedin - it shows up normally with all the info. However, in Google - it only shows location and industry. Hence, other details like job title are not visible in Google profile.

To find this profile - we can't put job title. We would have to put location and industry - then go through all the results to find needle in a haystack.

site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:med OR inurl:in) "Washington D.C. Metro Area" "legal services" -inurl:dir -inurl:jobs -inurl:events

Trick here is to understand the difference between Linkedin web page in Google and actual page.

[Andrea Mitchell]

When I run this string:

"Washington D.C. Metro Area" "1 connection" "legal services" -inurl:dir -inurl:jobs -inurl:events

and include omitted results I get Menachem's profile about a quarter of the way down the first page of 100 results. The url is not on linkedin though, its from Pipl (their directory even), and it's a bit of a hack because I used identifying information from his public profile, but at least I can think about something else now :P

What is interesting here is that -inurl:dir has quite a dramatic effect on results. It of course prevents Linkedin Directory results but when it comes to the pipl.com profiles they have dir highlighted in the url. If I take that operator out then I can't find Manachem any more

Thanks Irina for an interesting thought exercise, I still have more to ponder and experiment with!

[Irina Shamaeva]

By the way, frankly, I don't know how to find the person on Google without knowing his name. Interestingly, Google only picks up some keywords from LinkedIn profiles, so, for example, a search on Google for

"1 connection" "Legal Services" "Washington D.C. Metro Area" site:www.linkedin.com inurl:in OR inurl:pub (add your modifies as you like them)

will NOT bring up Menachem Ely. His page was not indexed with the keyword "1 connection", or even "industry" on Google.

This means that we need to be careful when we assume that all the words on a page would be keywords. Apparently there are many exceptions in LinkedIn. (I've long noticed poor results on Google when you look for, say, "20..40 connections"; the reason this doesn't quite work is, again, that Google ignores keywords.

You can do a similar search on Yahoo ("1 connection" "Legal Services" "Washington D.C. Metro Area" site:www.linkedin.com...), and while you will have do go through a couple hundred profiles, you will find Ely there.
Of course, we can't plan to search on Yahoo for very long.

Interesting.

[Irina Shamaeva]

Andrea,
Yes, I saw that (on pipl) too!


Andrea Mitchell said:

When I run this string:

"Washington D.C. Metro Area" "1 connection" "legal services" -inurl:dir -inurl:jobs -inurl:events

and include omitted results I get Menachem's profile about a quarter of the way down the first page of 100 results. The url is not on linkedin though, its from Pipl (their directory even), and it's a bit of a hack because I used identifying information from his public profile, but at least I can think about something else now :P

What is interesting here is that -inurl:dir has quite a dramatic effect on results. It of course prevents Linkedin Directory results but when it comes to the pipl.com profiles they have dir highlighted in the url. If I take that operator out then I can't find Manachem any more

Thanks Irina for an interesting thought exercise, I still have more to ponder and experiment with!

[Irina Shamaeva]

By the way I think if someone checks "none off" there's no URL anymore. The cashed version may stay up for a bit..

Ian R McAllister said:

As he has set his settings in his profile to "None off," LinkedIn still provides a public URL but tells search engines through use of a meta tag not to index it along the lines of:

meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow,noarchive"

Therefore, you won't find it in a Google search. The only way to find him is via an LI search.

I'd be interested to know if you have a public URL, and then hide it, for how long Google keeps an index it for/copy of it? I guess - as normal - forever, and the only way to hide it again would be by changing your public url address?

Good one Irina. Always learn more on these exercises!

[Andrea Mitchell]

None of the site:linkedin.com searches I did bought up his profile, and it wasn't until I added "1 connection" that found him, very interesting.

This exercise has really made me think about the keywords that I would use though.

Irina Shamaeva said:

By the way, frankly, I don't know how to find the person on Google without knowing his name. Interestingly, Google only picks up some keywords from LinkedIn profiles, so, for example, a search on Google for

"1 connection" "Legal Services" "Washington D.C. Metro Area" site:www.linkedin.com inurl:in OR inurl:pub (add your modifies as you like them)

will NOT bring up Menachem Ely. His page was not indexed with the keyword "1 connection", or even "industry" on Google.

This means that we need to be careful when we assume that all the words on a page would be keywords. Apparently there are many exceptions in LinkedIn. (I've long noticed poor results on Google when you look for, say, "20..40 connections"; the reason this doesn't quite work is, again, that Google ignores keywords.

You can do a similar search on Yahoo ("1 connection" "Legal Services" "Washington D.C. Metro Area" site:www.linkedin.com...), and while you will have do go through a couple hundred profiles, you will find Ely there.
Of course, we can't plan to search on Yahoo for very long.

Interesting.

[Mac]

No luck here as I ran this string and got 2 k results.. obviously i left out something;

 

site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:med OR inurl:in) KPMG "current * partner" "Washington D.C. Metro Area" -inurl:dir -inurl:jobs