#Sourcing Quiz!

[Irina Shamaeva]

Hi All,

 

Here is today's Super-Sourcing Quiz. You are all welcome to post your answers in reply to the post. The person who does best will be featured on the network. All members who correctly respond to the complete set of questions will get a guest pass to one of my webinars.

 

Ready?

 

1. If you search on Google using several keywords, and a page that comes up doesn't have a keyword you had used in the search string, how can that happen? Please list a few possibilities.

2. The same on Twitter. If you search on Twitter using several keywords, and a tweet that comes up doesn't have a keyword you had used in the search string, how can that happen?

3. The same for company search on LinkedIn. You search in the company search dialog using a keyword, click on a company that come up in the search, and the description doesn't have this word; how can this happen?

4. How does Google rank tweets?

5. Is it possible for a public profile to show more information than a profile seen within LinkedIn?

6. Which posts from an open LinkedIn group can be found by Google/Bing? What about groups that are not open?

7. Can you search LinkedIn for profiles with resumes attached to them?

8. Is there a way to see a LinkedIn status update for someone outside your network?

9. What (if any) is the difference between the operator site: on Google and on Bing?

10. What are some ways to find an email address based on a LinkedIn profile?

 

We'll run the quiz for a week. Have fun! :)

[Dave Galley]

1. If you search on Google using several keywords, and a page that comes up doesn't have a keyword you had used in the search string, how can that happen? Please list a few possibilities.

 

It is possible that the indexed version of a dynamic page had the terms, but the current version does not (check differences in cached versus current to spot this). The other likely possibility is that even though the page does not contain ALL of the search terms, the ranking algorithm indicates the page contains content similar enough to what you seem to be looking for to be returned in the search. While google tries match all keywords in the search each time, it isn't FORCED to do so unless you use special operators to filter results.

 

There's probably a much better explanation than this, however. It took me a while to come up with a good example of this in action --

 

[apple zebra proctology bingo] - returned a SURPRISING number of results (many of which were dictionary files, as I should have foreseen).

 

A 2009-era Google Help question mentioend [aardvark siamese twin] as causing this problem, but by today, in addition to the question itself, there are a number of Page 1 results that contain all terms. Modifying this a bit I got [aardvark dingo siamese twins getting dunked on] and that did reproduce the problem on Page 1 of results.

 

Using the explicit inclusion operator (+) or quotes (for phrase search) will limit this.

2. The same on Twitter. If you search on Twitter using several keywords, and a tweet that comes up doesn't have a keyword you had used in the search string, how can that happen?

 

Is this using the Twitter website directly, or a search engine? Assuming the former for purposes of this answer.

 

The most likely reason for this, if your search is using the main box on the main twitter page (haven't testing logged in vs not logged in), is that the result has a URL (and twitter search actually indexes against the URL in the tweet AND the redirected link if it's a shortened one) in it that contains the term you are searching for.

 

3. The same for company search on LinkedIn. You search in the company search dialog using a keyword, click on a company that come up in the search, and the description doesn't have this word; how can this happen?

 

The company search will return any company that has an associated current or former employee on LI whose profile contains the keyword, so this can happen quite frequently. In fact, sometimes this leads to companies with a lot of employees who contain the keyword to be ranked higher in search results than a company name you are using as a search term!

 

4. How does Google rank tweets?

 

Well, apparently they don't TunkRank. ;)

 

Per the 2010 interview, their algorithm involves a mix of social ranking / popularity (retweets, followers, FOAFish stuff), with limiters like how spammy it is, hash tags are factored in, and the Local Search results (at least) weight geolocation data as well.

 

5. Is it possible for a public profile to show more information than a profile seen within LinkedIn?

 

Absolutely. Given that only limited information is available for some profiles that are third degree connections (or not connected at all), the public profile views of those individuals (if they have chosen to leave everything visible) will contain a great deal more than the visible portion of their private profile.

 

For example -- http://www.linkedin.com/in/alavis -- this person's private profile tells me much less (since she's totally out of my network, my basic "director of accounting" search did not reveal even a partial name). Amusingly, the visible results for director of HR, human resources, recruiting, sourcing, purchasing, IT, and a few others were all at least third degree contacts - took me a while to find a category with some hidden names!

 

6. Which posts from an open LinkedIn group can be found by Google/Bing? What about groups that are not open?

 

I haven't done much reading testing of this, but based on the documentation, all NEW discussions (or older ones restarted using the prompts in LI) from the point where the group goes open will be indexed.

 

I don't believe that groups which are not open have their discussions indexed at all.

 

7. Can you search LinkedIn for profiles with resumes attached to them?

 

I don't believe there is a method for searching the contents of any of the widgets allowing you to "attach" files to the resumes.

 

You could search "links" (link section of profile or any other searchable section) that appear to be for offsite resumes, you can search publicly visible "LinkedIn Resume Builder" outputs, and there are some other ways to approximate it, but the short answer would be: no.

 

8. Is there a way to see a LinkedIn status update for someone outside your network?

 

Yes, but I believe this is only possible if the individual allows it - there is a privacy option to allow "everyone" to see you status updates. If you allow it, it can be seen, but otherwise I don't think it can.

 

9. What (if any) is the difference between the operator site: on Google and on Bing?

 

The Bing operator allows for search across multiple domains "(site:example1.tld OR site:example2.tld)", and to the best of my knowledge the Google operator does not support this. That would be the most glaring difference - haven't played with them enough to note any others.

 

10. What are some ways to find an email address based on a LinkedIn profile?

 

Based on the LI profile - the obvious choice is Gary Cozin's favorite string: "email * * @companydomain.tld" (assuming the current employer on LI is accurate and you have the full name) to find the proper address construction, then use the name to test out possibilities.

 

The profile might also provide provide name and city/metro. You could use general web search or "deep web" search (pipl) to seek out possible hits for this name, then cross-compare available data to find other profiles or sites where such info is publicly listed.

 

You can always do a straight search for fname lname email (assuming you got the name from the LI profile - otherwise this wouldn't necessarily count).

 

Finally, you can potentially verify the e-mail address used to make the LI profile by attempting to "add contacts" or sent group / connection invites to a number of possible e-mail addresses you have come up with (using the above or just variations on the name with common webmail or cable/telecom providers for their region).

[vivek jothi]

1. If you search on Google using several keywords, and a page that comes up doesn't have a keyword you had used in the search string, how can that happen? Please list a few possibilities.

 

This can happen if the search words limits 32 terms which is the maximum limit for google searches

 

From google search tips - A particular word might not appear on a page in your results if there is sufficient other evidence that the page is relevant. The evidence might come from language analysis that Google has done or many other sources. For example, the query [ overhead view of the bellagio pool ] will give you nice overhead pictures from pages that do not include the word 'overhead.'

 

Can happen due to the spelling mistakes in the key words

 

2. The same on Twitter. If you search on Twitter using several keywords, and a tweet that comes up doesn't have a keyword you had used in the search string, how can that happen?

 

If the query is exceeding 140 chrecteristcis

 

 3. The same for company search on LinkedIn. You search in the company search dialog using a keyword, click on a company that come up in the search, and the description doesn't have this word; how can this happen?

 

I guess this is because in the company page the employee details are also displayed with their job titles which matches the key words brings up these results.

 

4. How does Google rank tweets?

 

A fundamental Google strategy for identifying tweet relevance is analogous to that used by Google's PageRank technology, which helps find relevant Web pages with traditional Web search. Under PageRank, Google judges the importance of pages containing a given search keyword in part by looking at the pages' link structure. The more pages that link to a page--and the more pages linking to the linkers--the more relevant the original page.

source: http://www.technologyreview.com/web/24353/?a=f

 

5. Is it possible for a public profile to show more information than a profile seen within LinkedIn?

Yes using the new edit feature for public profile in LI

 

6. Which posts from an open LinkedIn group can be found by Google/Bing? What about groups that are not open?

 

Posts which has comments or likes appears in google or bing (

In closed group only the most popular discussion is visible on web

 

7. Can you search LinkedIn for profiles with resumes attached to them?

 

It is not available for basic membership and not sure about this in premium membership since I haven't used it.

 

8. Is there a way to see a LinkedIn status update for someone outside your network?

 

Yes using

http://www.linkedin.com/signal/

 

9. What (if any) is the difference between the operator site: on Google and on Bing?

 

Google results recognizes only the second term when we use OR operator to the site: keyword eg. site:(xing.com OR linkedin.com) brings results with only linkedin urls.

 

Bing brings results both from xing and linkedin urls of the same query site:(xing.com OR linkedin.com)

 

10. What are some ways to find an email address based on a LinkedIn profile?

 

Following Gary’s string

site:linkedin.com (intitle:com OR gmail.com OR yahoo.com) keywords title "location" -inurl:dir –job -events

 

Best Regards

 

Vivek

 

 

 

[Dave Galley]

Vivek,

 

I love these quizzes and contests, because whatever you know, there is always more to know! A great way to learn, and to see how others think, and to approach problems from different angles.

I had forgotten Signal! I see that Signal has added support for IE, so I will be more actively using it now.

Could you explain more how the most popular discussions of closed groups are indexed?

 

-Dave

vivek jothi said:

[vivek jothi]

Dave

I learned about linkedin signal via boolean strings, thanks to group.
I am not pretty much sure about the indexing by linkedin.com but when i checked the source code for a a closed group and find "most popular discussion" in the script so i guess this is how the page set up is done by linkedin for public view. Anyone please correct me if i am wrong, looking forward to learn more about this.

Best Regards
Vivek

Dave G. said:

Vivek,

 

I love these quizzes and contests, because whatever you know, there is always more to know! A great way to learn, and to see how others think, and to approach problems from different angles.

I had forgotten Signal! I see that Signal has added support for IE, so I will be more actively using it now.

Could you explain more how the most popular discussions of closed groups are indexed?

 

-Dave

vivek jothi said:

[Lori Anderson]

1.If you search on Google using several keywords, and a page that comes up doesn't have a keyword you had used in the search string, how can that happen? Please list a few possibilities.

Sometimes the web designer uses keywords in the pages that are the same color as the background. To a web user, this would show as invisible but the Googlebot would pick these words up and index based on them. Keywords can also be embedded in the descriptions of images on the website as well and this will also pick up by the googlebot. Another solution would be an old cached page that used to have a keyword you are now searching for and Google has not updated in the system so the old keyword is still active. Although Google says they don't use the meta-tags, there is some evidence that may no longer be the case.
Another possibility is that Google may be using meta tags in a limited way again. According to the website http://www.seroundtable.com/google-meta-keywords-tag-use-12805.html Ben Pfeiffer has discovered evidence that indicates Google is using keywords from meta tags, at least in part. Google denies the use of meta tags here, http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-... however, Jill Whalen on a high ranking forum stated that she caught Google using one of her meta tags in an internal search. On Jill's blog she states “


"Meta keywords contained on a given page does not influence the search results for *that* page. While yes, it may cause Google to do fill out your internal site search page for those phrases, which in turn they index and the resulting page can then be found in the search engines, that seems to be the extent of it."
This phenomenon may result at times with a page getting into a search without the proper keyword.
Another reason this might happen is due to linkbacks to the page that are relevant to the search you are doing, even though the page that a search produces is not related.

2.The same on Twitter. If you search on Twitter using several keywords, and a tweet that comes up doesn't have a keyword you had used in the search string, how can that happen?

The website http://www.philb.com/twittersearch.htm maintained by Phil Bradley, explains how a Twitter web search works. The search box does not recognize all Boolean search terms equally. It recognizes AND and OR but sees NOT as a search term. The minus sign is recognized however. If there are other terms you are using to search and you do not fully understand how Twitter will process your search, you could end up using terms the site does not recognize and therefore get search results you see as unrelated to your search. The Twitter search engine will also pick up tweets that are related to a subject and not necessarily laden with the keyword you are looking for. When testing this theory myself, I searched for the word “chicken”, Twitter returned a tweet that had nothing to do with 'chicken” from a user with chicken in his user name. One method for making tweets more visible is the use of hashtags (#) in the tweet. These tags are picked up more readily in Twitter and make the discussion appear in all searches when a member clicks the hashtag about the topic or keyword on the site. This makes the page seem more relevant and can also make an irrelevant page show up in a search.


3.The same for company search on LinkedIn. You search in the company search dialog using a keyword, click on a company that come up in the search, and the description doesn't have this word; how can this happen?

The company name, itself could have the search term you are looking for, even though the description would not have it. The company could have a link from a tweet or facebook remark that uses the keyword you are looking for and it links back to your search. In researching this question I found out that LinkedIn uses a proprietary search method they keep very secret. A blog on the subject by Daniel Tunkelang entitled “LinkedIn – A Look Beneath The Hood” was a synopsis of a presentation given by John Wang, Search Architect at LinkedIn. According to Wang, each search is dynamically generated every time a query is made. One of the slides from the presentation states that the indexing does not use index/cache warming but creates every search in real time. It also searches the entire profile for the keyword, not just the description. Because of this, if a company has the keyword in their name, email address or website address, you will get that company in search, even if they are not descriptively what you are looking for.

4.How does Google rank tweets?

The website http://www.technologyreview.com/web/24353/?a=f explains how Google and Bing index real time tweets. Google has created a series of algorithms that judge the relevance of microblogs containing 140 characters or less. They have forged deals with Twitter to have access to this real time content as it is created, rather than crawling the site constantly and losing valuable time indexing this information. David Talbot explains in this article how Google ranks content it receives from Twitter “The tweets are a mainstay of Google's real-time results, but Google has not previously discussed how it ranks them. A fundamental Google strategy for identifying tweet relevance is analogous to that used by Google's PageRank technology, which helps find relevant Web pages with traditional Web search. Under PageRank, Google judges the importance of pages containing a given search keyword in part by looking at the pages' link structure. The more pages that link to a page--and the more pages linking to the linkers--the more relevant the original page.”

5.Is it possible for a public profile to show more information than a profile seen within LinkedIn?

The personal profile of a person on LinkedIn is derived from the information listed on their private profile. Because of this, it should not be possible for a public profile to show more information than a private profile in LinkedIn. On the website http://www.askdavetaylor.com/can_i_make_my_linkedin_profile_public.... David Taylor explains how a private profile is used to create a public one and how to manipulate the data displayed, but all the content from the public page is created from the private page and the user defines how it is displayed.

6.Which posts from an open LinkedIn group can be found by Google/Bing? What about groups that are not open?

With an open group everything is indexed by Google and Bing. This allows the content to be displayed in searches that are relevant to that group. Groups that are not open, the content will not be indexed at all and stays confined to the group it was posted to, unless it is posted on another site, like Twitter by a group member. This process is explained in detail at http://ecommerceblog.fastpivot.com/social-media/how-linkedins-new-o...


7.Can you search LinkedIn for profiles with resumes attached to them?

 
You will see if a resume is attached to a profile once you open it but I am not aware of any way to limit the LinkedIn search to include only profiles with resumes attached. In searching for an answer using Google, I was unable to find a reference to a way to make this kind of search or a string to do this. I was also not able to find a reference to this being possible as a premium member either.

8.Is there a way to see a LinkedIn status update for someone outside your network?

http://blog.linkedin.com/2008/02/28/whats-new-at-li/ explains how the status update works. Whether those not in your network can see this update is totally user controlled. If a user chooses to show their status to only those in the network, then there will be no way to view the status update if you are outside the network. If a user chooses for this to be public, anyone can view their status regardless of being in the network or not.

9.What (if any) is the difference between the operator site: on Google and on Bing?

There is little difference between Google and Bing when using the operator site: for English website searches. The difference comes when searching international IDNs. The website http://www.lbi.co.uk/tag/microsoft/ looked at the differences in search results between Bing and Google when dealing with foreign IDNs. It found that Bing returned no results for any of the new IDNs where as Google would but returned all related sites, not just the one being searched for. This was the only major difference between Bing and Google on this subject I was able to find.

10.What are some ways to find an email address based on a LinkedIn profile?

On the LinkedIn Developers thread at http://developer.linkedin.com/thread/1071 there was a discussion about allowing searches by email address. Lucian from LinkedIn was quoted as saying “At the moment, we don't have another way to do this. While conceptually and technically, it is possible to provide this, doing so opens a reasonable risk to our user's privacy. Using an API such as this would allow people with long lists of email addresses to quickly validate them and even attach user data to the email addresses. This is not a feature we will support.“ so searching by email address is not something that can be done at this time on LinkedIn. If you Google a profile name, sometimes, if the information is public in LinkedIn, the email address will be viewable. However, if the user has chosen to not allow email to be public, then the email will not be displayed regardless of what is done. 

 

[Lori Anderson]

This was an incredible research project.  I learned so much answering these questions.  Thank you so much for the opportunity to learn so much from an evening at my computer.  :0)

 

LEAnderson

[gary cozin]

For Question #7:

 

site:www.linkedin.com "my resume" -inurl:dir

 

This will search on the profile anywhere "my resume" is indicated - it could be in the 'websites' section listed as a link to "my resume" or in a box.net application on the profile. Of course you can add keywords, locations, etc

 

Gary

[vivek jothi]

Thank you for this string Gary!

i just modified this string by adding some key words, please let me know your thoughts

 

site:www.linkedin.com intext:"my resume" -inurl:dir inurl:pub -141,000 results
site:www.linkedin.com "my resume" -inurl:dir inurl:pub (pdf OR .doc) -136 results

 

Best Regards

 

Vivek 

gary cozin said:

For Question #7:

 

site:www.linkedin.com "my resume" -inurl:dir

 

This will search on the profile anywhere "my resume" is indicated - it could be in the 'websites' section listed as a link to "my resume" or in a box.net application on the profile. Of course you can add keywords, locations, etc

 

Gary

[Irina Shamaeva]

OK folks,

 

Thanks a lot for participating!

Here are some answers:

1. If you search on Google using several keywords, and a page that comes up doesn't have a keyword you had used in the search string, how can that happen? Please list a few possibilities.

Most answers are correct. The two major cases when it happens are 1) cached page has the word, current page doesn't 2) the page has a variation of the word.

 

2. The same on Twitter. If you search on Twitter using several keywords, and a tweet that comes up doesn't have a keyword you had used in the search string, how can that happen?

Twitter search includes the URL (even if it's shortened).

 

3.The same for company search on LinkedIn. You search in the company search dialog using a keyword, click on a company that come up in the search, and the description doesn't have this word; how can this happen?

The algorithm has actually been published in the LI blog. If an employee of a company has your keyword, that company will be shown in the results.

 

4.How does Google rank tweets.

Most answers are correct. A tweet is ranked higher if the author has more followers.

 

5.Is it possible for a public profile to show more information than a profile seen within LinkedIn?

Yes, if the profile is outside of your network (or a 3rd level for basic users), is public and the owner chooses to show the information in his/her settings.

6. Which posts from an open LinkedIn group can be found by Google/Bing? What about groups that are not open?

A post from an open group needs to have a link from the open web to it to be indexed. Closed groups are not indexed.

 

7.Can you search LinkedIn for profiles with resumes attached to them?

No. Documents attached to profiles (or their presence) cannot be searched.

 

8.Is there a way to see a LinkedIn status update for someone outside your network?

Yes, using Signal.

 

9.What (if any) is the difference between the operator site: on Google and on Bing?

Folks, can you take another look at the documentation and update your answers? 

Google can use two site: operators in one search string, as in 

site:linkedin.com OR site: twitter.com

 

10.What are some ways to find an email address based on a LinkedIn profile?

Of course, LinkedIn wouldn't allow that (or how would they charge for InMails?).

The answers cover a good range of possibilities.

 

Thanks again!

Dave G is our winner, due to the quality and correctness of his answers.

 

[Irina Shamaeva]

Regarding the operator site:

- I have pasted two pieces of documentation below.

 

Attention: notice the two levels deep limit on Bing.

 

Bing Services

Site:

Returns webpages that belong to the specified site.

Example

"heart disease" (site:bbc.co.uk OR site:cnn.com)

Remarks

To focus on two or more domains, use OR to group the domains. You can use site: to search for web domains, top level domains, and directories that are not more than two levels deep. You can also search for webpages that contain a specific search word on a site.

 

Google

site:

If you include site: in your query, Google will restrict your search results to the site or domain you specify. For example, [ admissions site:www.lse.ac.uk ] will show admissions information from London School of Economics’ site and [ peace site:gov ] will find pages about peace within the .gov domain. You can specify a domain with or without a period, e.g., either as .gov or gov.

Note: Do not include a space between the “site:” and the domain.

You can use many of the search operators in conjunction with the basic search operators +,–, OR, and " ". For example, to find information on Windows security from all sites exceptmicrosoft.com, enter:

[  windows security –site:microsoft.com  ]

You can also restrict your results to a site or domain through the domains selector on the Advanced Search page.

 

[Cathy Ou]

Here are the answers I emailed to Irina on the night of 4/18/11. Woops, I should've posted 'em here! :)

 

1. This can happen because the page that was indexed or cached has been changed but Google or Bing hasn't re-indexed it yet. Another way this could happen is that Google interprets your keywords and tries to present to you something it thinks you may be looking for; the result may have many of your keywords but not all. 

2. Sometimes Twitter can return results where the keyword is within the URL instead. There may be some internal operators that aren't disclosed. Another reason could be that Twitter doesn't recognize certain characters. 

3. This can happen because a profile on LI has that keyword, therefore LI thinks it's a relevant result.

4. Follower numbers - the greater one's followers the higher the ranking.

5. Yes because when on LI, if you click on someone's profile that isn't in your network you may see very limited info (such as only seeing the person's first name). But if you do an x-ray search and get to their public profile, you could see full name & other info.

6. Any post on an open LI group is Google-able, Yahoo-able, and Bing-able if there is a link from the open web to the post. Any posts from closed groups are not indexed by the search engines. 

7. According to your last webinar, you said that one cannot search LI profiles with resumes attached to them, not from within LI or outside of LI. However, Gary Cozin seems to have found a string that allows you to X-ray it: site:www.linkedin.com "my resume" -inurl:dir. When I use this string, I seem to get a lot of false positives, mostly profiles that have a link to their resume so I am not inclined to say that this is foolproof.

8. Yes, by using LinkedIn Signal.

9. There are no major differences in the operator site: in Google or in Yahoo other than the fact that in Yahoo, you can use the OR operator at the same time to search more than one website.

10. (1) In Google use this string: "email * * companyname.com" (Use quotes & replace companyname w/the co you want) 

In BING: email NEAR:2 companyname.com 

(2) Go to their company's website & click around to try to find how that company's email addresses formats are like.

(3) Scroll around in their LI profile & they may list their email address right there or they may post their website & within their website, you may find their email address/ contact info.

(4) Search for them in a job board & you may be able to pull up their profile & find their contact info in there.

(5) Search on Jigsaw, Pipl, Zoominfo, Spoke. (Can X-ray them too.)

(6) Call into the company where they work & try to reach them.