The Internet Sourcing Community

Mini-Sourcing Contest

How many results can you get in one search on LinkedIn? (It's relevant to figuring out how many real people there are, by the way!)

Create and share a search on LinkedIn that brings up the largest number of results.

Here is a string with ~18 million results. How much better can you do? Please post your suggestions in reply. We'll feature the winner on Friday. I am happy to give a webinar credit to the winner.

-Irina

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Quy Nguyen on December 9, 2010 at 8:59pm

Dear Irina,

I tried for this with 39,253,141 results:

http://xrl.us/bia3dz

Regards,

Quy Nguyen

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Permalink Reply by Dave Galley on December 10, 2010 at 7:22am

Probably missed the deadline on this, but worth a shot:

http://linkd.in/fphCkQ (I believe you need to be logged in to see the results) - 44,772,779 results.

The hardest part was developing a workable methodology. I feel like this testing could be automated - I hate actually doing by hand what I know I should be able to make something else do for me. ;)

There are some limits in place - either browsers choke on URL length (IE!) or LI chokes on the URL length, OR LI chokes on the return results size. I originally thought it was LI not accepting the query, but over the last 24 hours I believe it is a difficulty that LI has in displaying results above a certain number. It could be both, though, or something else entirely.

I had some luck with up to 80-85 search terms (~149 words, including the ORs, URL length well short of even IE's max), but the results were in teh low 30Ms. I got occasional errors on when returning results in the low 40Ms, but with far fewer terms.

The key here is to determine which combination of keywords will return the highest number of results without failing. I focused on finding the first keyword with the highest return (X1), then searching (X2 AND NOT X1) until I found the next highest likely keyword (manager, in this case), and so on until I got to this point. I'm sure there's some clean-looking sigma notation for this, but I'm a bit rusty. ;)

Did shamelessly steal John Fortner's string to limit my initial search space, though. Complete dictionary would've taken far longer than I have time for at the moment. Have to say, though, that some of the search terms in that string gave very minimal boosts to the results!

Some rough notes from my tests:

university = ~20M

manager = ~15M

university OR manager = ~28M

AND NOT (university OR manager)

owner = 4,175,420
college = 2.5M - relatively high even w/ school
school = 1.7M - relatively high even w/ college
senior = 1.5K
engineer = 1.9M
business = 1.8M
sales = 1.5M
software = 1.1M
service = 1.0M

computer = 786992
experience = 676K
customer = 610K
education = 482K
travel = 251,286
job = 204K
hardware = 181K
clerk = 142K
experienced = 140K
manage = 134K
inventory = 99K
driver = ~80K
stock = 84K
warehouse = 64K

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Permalink Reply by Irina Shamaeva on December 10, 2010 at 7:30am

Thanks for the great research, Dave! It looks like you are ahead of the crowd. The deadline is tonight.

I'd like to add that LinkedIn ignores some short words like "the", but would search for other - like "a" or "in" or "on" or "do" for example, or for digits. Perhaps we could use that to bump up the total number a bit more.

-Irina

Dave G. said:

Probably missed the deadline on this, but worth a shot:

http://linkd.in/fphCkQ (I believe you need to be logged in to see the results) - 44,772,779 results.

The hardest part was developing a workable methodology. I feel like this testing could be automated - I hate actually doing by hand what I know I should be able to make something else do for me. ;)

There are some limits in place - either browsers choke on URL length (IE!) or LI chokes on the URL length, OR LI chokes on the return results size. I originally thought it was LI not accepting the query, but over the last 24 hours I believe it is a difficulty that LI has in displaying results above a certain number. It could be both, though, or something else entirely.

I had some luck with up to 80-85 search terms (~149 words, including the ORs, URL length well short of even IE's max), but the results were in teh low 30Ms. I got occasional errors on when returning results in the low 40Ms, but with far fewer terms.

The key here is to determine which combination of keywords will return the highest number of results without failing. I focused on finding the first keyword with the highest return (X1), then searching (X2 AND NOT X1) until I found the next highest likely keyword (manager, in this case), and so on until I got to this point. I'm sure there's some clean-looking sigma notation for this, but I'm a bit rusty. ;)

Did shamelessly steal John Fortner's string to limit my initial search space, though. Complete dictionary would've taken far longer than I have time for at the moment. Have to say, though, that some of the search terms in that string gave very minimal boosts to the results!

Some rough notes from my tests:

university = ~20M

manager = ~15M

university OR manager = ~28M

AND NOT (university OR manager)

owner = 4,175,420
college = 2.5M - relatively high even w/ school
school = 1.7M - relatively high even w/ college
senior = 1.5K
engineer = 1.9M
business = 1.8M
sales = 1.5M
software = 1.1M
service = 1.0M

computer = 786992
experience = 676K
customer = 610K
education = 482K
travel = 251,286
job = 204K
hardware = 181K
clerk = 142K
experienced = 140K
manage = 134K
inventory = 99K
driver = ~80K
stock = 84K
warehouse = 64K

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Permalink Reply by Lanim on December 10, 2010 at 11:24am

Modified the string by trying digits & a, on , in etc. Digits did not yield much result. The letter ‘a’ did. Thank You Irina...

Initial Strings

manager OR sales OR marketing - 19,520,799 results
manager OR sales OR marketing OR university - 31,299,450 results
manager OR senior OR sales OR marketing OR university - 32,666,728 results
manager OR sales OR marketing OR university OR director - 33,408,907 results
manager OR sales OR marketing OR university OR director OR systems - 34,253,124 results
manager OR sales OR marketing OR university OR director OR systems OR owner - 37,986,416
manager OR sales OR marketing OR university OR director OR systems OR owner OR support
38,438,585 results

manager OR sales OR marketing OR university OR director OR systems OR owner OR support OR business OR senior - 40,243,667 results

manager OR sales OR marketing OR university OR director OR systems OR owner OR support OR business OR assistant OR senior OR group OR bank OR lead - 41,984,740 results

manager OR sales OR marketing OR university OR director OR systems OR owner OR support OR business OR assistant OR senior OR engineer OR lead - 42,392,099 results

manager OR sales OR marketing OR university OR director OR systems OR owner OR support OR business OR assistant OR senior OR engineer OR lead OR group OR bank OR technology
43,612,170 results

manager OR sales OR marketing OR university OR director OR systems OR owner OR support OR business OR assistant OR senior OR engineer OR lead OR group OR bank OR technology OR engineering
44,569,582 results

_________________________________________________________
Modifications - (Not Much Modification though)

a OR manager OR senior OR marketing OR sales OR university OR director - 36,887,140 results

a OR manager OR senior OR marketing OR sales OR university OR owner - 38,659,743 results

a OR manager OR senior OR marketing OR sales OR university OR owner OR services -
39,664,220 results

a OR manager OR senior OR marketing OR sales OR university OR owner OR services OR business OR corporate - 40,460,869 results

a OR manager OR senior OR marketing OR sales OR university OR owner OR services OR business OR assistant OR engineer - 42,371,113 results

manager OR sales OR marketing OR university OR director OR systems OR owner OR support OR business OR assistant OR senior OR engineer OR lead OR group OR bank OR technology OR consultant - 44,426,688 results

a OR on OR technical OR manager OR sales OR marketing OR university OR director OR systems OR owner OR support OR business OR assistant OR senior OR engineer OR technology OR bank OR engineering - 44,893,714 results

a OR on OR in OR do OR manager OR sales OR marketing OR university OR director OR systems OR owner OR support OR business OR assistant OR senior OR engineer OR technology OR bank - 45,042,295 results

a OR on OR technical OR manager OR sales OR marketing OR university OR director OR systems OR owner OR support OR business OR assistant OR senior OR engineer OR technology OR bank OR engineering OR corporation - 45,027,699 results

My Final String –

a OR technical OR manager OR sales OR marketing OR university OR director OR systems OR owner OR support OR business OR assistant OR senior OR engineer OR technology OR bank OR engineering OR corporation OR co. OR ltd OR org

45,624,012 results

http://www.linkedin.com/search/fpsearch?keywords=a+OR+technical+OR+...