Updated May 2023
One of the most powerful things about LinkedIn is its search capability which, when you’ve got the hang of it, can hugely enhance the effectiveness of your outreach and LinkedIn lead generation programs.
In this blog, we’ll cover how to use the LinkedIn search tools most effectively - including Boolean searching and Regex options to ensure that your targeting is more accurate - turning your LinkedIn prospect list into a potential customer list.
The biggest advantage of the LinkedIn platform is that the contact data is structured in a format that allows you to specify search terms for specific fields.
For instance, you can specify in the LinkedIn search bar a specific job title or position and it will return only LinkedIn profiles who have that matching criteria in their job role.
You can also filter your search results on LinkedIn by clicking on the “All Filters” section after you have made the search in the header of the LinkedIn website.
Once you click on the “All Filters”, you'll see the following search fields:
LinkedIn Premium search filters (LinkedIn Recruiter and Sales Navigator) include additional filter options such as:
Tip: For an exact phrase, enclose the phrase in quotation marks. For example, type "product manager". You can also use quotation marks if you want to find someone with a multi-word title.
Note: LinkedIn search only supports standard, straight quotation marks (").
Boolean search is a type of search that allows LinkedIn users to combine keywords such as AND, NOT and OR to further produce more relevant results. For example, a Boolean search could be CEO OR Owner NOT Manager. This would limit the search results to only those documents containing the two keywords.
Note: Boolean search will work in the Company, Title, and Keyword fields in Sales Navigator.
OR Searches
People use different words to describe similar concepts on their profiles. For example, an owner of the business might have "Owner", "CEO" or "Director", which means that you can have LinkedIn return people who have any one of those terms in their profiles.
So, in our search for a business owner, we might do a search for CEO OR Director OR Owner:
Note: “OR” will typically broaden your search results.
AND Searches
If you want your search to contain both keywords, for example, “web designer”, the Boolean AND expression will allow you to ensure that a person has both terms in their profile:
Web AND Designer
Note: “AND” will typically limit your search results.
For the best results, you can combine Boolean terms to exclude unwanted profiles, also known as the parenthetical search. For example:
Web AND (Designer OR Developer)
LinkedIn will show you all profiles that match “Web Developer” and “Web Designer” in their title section.
NOT Searches
The last function in the Boolean search trio is NOT. However, it can be used in conjunction with other functions such as AND and OR. So, for example, with the following search:
Web AND (Developer OR Designer) AND NOT Apprentice
LinkedIn will display every profile who matches your query, but without people who are apprentices.
Note: “NOT” will typically limit your search results
It’s worth mentioning that all Boolean expressions are case sensitive, i.e. they have to be in capital letters: “OR”, “AND” and “NOT”.
Learn more on how to use LinkedIn advanced search and Boolean, scan your results, export the recorded profile data and reach out here.
Dux-Soup offers a variety of skipping features and creates a powerful tool to filter your potential leads on LinkedIn. Take a look at this article to learn more about the skipping options available in Dux-Soup.
If you're not already a Dux-Soup user, then why not take advantage of our 2-week free trial. Just click on the link below to get started.
In this blog, we show you an advanced feature called Skip profiles that match pattern (Dux-Soup Options, Skipping tab). By adding additional filtering rules using regular expression, you will complement the LinkedIn search and skipping functionality. For example:
A regular expression or regex is a sequence of characters that define a search pattern. For example, you could use regex to make sure you skip people who work for a certain company, or have a certain job title.
If you have a specific list of companies or LinkedIn profiles that you want to skip, you can copy the following expression and change the words marked in bold according to your needs:
(^|>)[^<]*?(?:ibm|microsoft)[^<]*?(<|$)
Dux-Soup would then look at the html code for a profile and look for certain strings/patterns of text depending on what you have defined.
You can add more company names to the expression by separating them with the vertical line (|). All profiles that were found to have either IBM or Microsoft in their profile would be skipped with Dux-Soup.
Note: It can be used against employer, current role, location - basically any text that appears on a search result.
Tip: Regex101 allows you to create, debug, test and have your expressions explained for PHP, PCRE, Python, Golang and JavaScript. The website also features a community where you can share useful expressions.
In the Search and Filtering Masterclass we demo everything covered in this blog. Yes, we cover the Boolean search string, but in addition we also show you how to:
- Add additional filtering rules to complement the LinkedIn search and skipping functionality
- Apply useful filters
- Use regex (regular expression) so you can see what's possible
Practising the above tips will make your LinkedIn search and filtering more effective and it will definitely kick it up a notch.
Using things like Boolean searches and applying regex helps to optimize your search results and get a more targeted and accurate list of LinkedIn prospects, and that can only help you win more business!
If you're not already a Dux user, then give o free Dux-Soup trial a go - you get 14 days absolutely free and we don't even ask for any payment details.
If you have any feedback, questions, or comments - we’d love to hear them. Feel free to contact us at info@dux-soup.com and we’ll definitely get back to you!
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