How to research the web for potential employers or customers

Now for one you might have been waiting for with bait breath. - How to find all the potential employers or customers within a given geographic area.

Here's how:

1. Go to your local maps.google.xxx (eg maps.google.com)
2. Type in the endings for public companies
- In the UK, Ltd and PLC are most common. In the US, LLC is one you could use

3. Then select the geographic region - I suggest city name.

Your search string might be as simple as "LLC seattle". If you try this one, you'll see it comes up with hundreds of results.

Narrow your search by using more qualifiers (use the + sign).

How To Job Search using the Internet is a step by step guide I have written to help organise your search. Available for a modest fee - £5.

Searching the web for potential employees

Using Google to deep search for potential employees seems like a reasonable place to start looking at Internet research techniques. Try the two following search strings on you google page:

~"software engineer" + "Los Angeles" -inurl:job inurl:cv resume

unemployed + "los angeles" + "software engineer" site:linkedin.com -inurl:/dir/ /companies/

~ - the operator for like/related/similar
- the operator for OR
inurl: - field for the information in the actual url address
intitle: - field for the information in actual title of the page
site: - lets you limit the search to a particular site
- - the operator for not (as applied to inurl, intitle, site)


So let's look the strings again:

~"software engineer" + "Los Angeles" -inurl:job inurl:cv resume

Ok, so I'm looking for someone who would identify themselves as something similar to a Software Engineer in Los Angeles who has the sense to use "CV" or "resume" in the url. The "-inurl:job" ensures we don't get all the job adverts for our search terms.

unemployed + "los angeles" + "software engineer" site:linkedin.com -inurl:/dir/ /companies/

This string indicates that I'm looking for someone unemployed in Los Angeles.... on the linkedin.com site.

the "-inurl:/dir/ /companies/" ensures I don't get results pointing to LinkedIn's directory or company profile pages.

Once you get the hang of this, you can construct quite elaborate search strings which will keep your results to less than 1,000.

A Simple One - change the number of results per page

Tired of having to open page after page of internet research results to find what you seek?

Sometimes you just have to look through all the results to get the hit you need to find and there is nothing except hard graft which will do that for you.

Google will return up to the first 1,000 results for you to pursue. But wait, you say - that's hundreds of pages. Here's how to at least reduce the number of pages.

Here's How:

1. Go to http://www.google.com (or your country page)
2. Click on "Preferences" to the right of the search box.
3. Decide if you want results to appear in a new window; if so, select.
4. Save Preferences (located at the lower right hand corner of the page).

Voila, the search is your's to command.

Try it and see.

Welcome

Welcome to the Internet Research Techniques blog.

My aim is to help you get the most out of your online experience by developing research techniques to help you discover the arts of finding what you seek on the internet.

I'm happy to learn along the way, so if you have something to share, just let me know.

Alison