X-Ray Searches

What is an X-Ray search?

An x-ray search is an advanced search strategy that will help you pull relevant information from a website. Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo allow you to use x-ray searches to “crawl” a website for specific keywords.

How Do I Do That?

To execute a basic x-ray search enter site:url.com (keyword AND keyword OR keyword).

• For example, if you wanted to x-ray LinkedIn to find executives for Aetna, you might enter:
  • Site:linkedin.com (aetna AND ceo OR president OR vp OR vice president)

Can I Only Use "AND" & "OR"?

You could actually make the search string as long or as complicated as you wish using Boolean operators.

To further narrow your results, you can add inurl:pub or inurl:in to your search command to only include results that are profiles (and not job postings).

• This would look like this: Site:linkedin.com inurl:pub | inurl:in (aetna AND ceo OR president OR vp OR vice president)

This document, while older, explains how to format x-ray searches for the best results.

Here's a reminder of Boolean operators and how they can be used within an x-ray search to product more relevant results: