Boolean Search for Recruiters

Google X-ray Search: A Recruiter's Guide

X-ray search means using Google to look inside one website for people. It finds candidates your paid tools miss, and it breaks in different ways than LinkedIn does. Here is how to build a string that actually works.

By Jackye Clayton · Talent Lab

The short version

  • Start with site: to pick where you are looking.
  • Quote titles, group variations with OR in parentheses, and skip AND.
  • Write location as words, because Google has no location filter.
  • Keep it short. Google drops the end of long strings without warning.

The operators that matter

site:

Limits results to one website or one section of it. site:linkedin.com/in returns public profile pages, not company pages or posts.

" "

Quotes force an exact phrase. "data engineer" will not match a page that only says engineer and data in different places.

OR

Matches either term. Type it in capitals. A lowercase "or" can be read as a plain word.

( )

Groups your OR terms so Google applies them together. Keep each group short.

-

Excludes a word. Put it right before the term with no space: -jobs, -intern. Use it sparingly.

intitle:

Requires a word in the page title. Useful for resumes and portfolio pages, where the title often holds the job title.

inurl:

Requires a word in the web address, such as inurl:resume or inurl:portfolio.

Five things that trip recruiters up

There is no AND

Google treats every space as AND already. Typing AND adds nothing, and it uses up room in your search.

Google has a word limit

Google ignores words past its query length limit, roughly 32 words, without telling you. Long strings quietly lose their last terms, which is often your location or your exclusions.

Search the words people write, not your filters

There are no location or years filters. Write the city, region or country the way it appears on a profile, and include common variations.

Results are not a database

Google shows what it has indexed, ranked its own way. Two people running the same string can see different results. Treat it as a way to find people, not to count them.

Public does not mean permission

Only contact people through channels they chose to share, follow your company's data rules, and do not scrape or store profiles in bulk.

Build the string in this order

  1. Pick the site. Where does this person leave a public trail?
  2. Add one quoted title. Run it and check that the results are people, not job ads.
  3. Turn the title into an OR group of the words people really use.
  4. Add one or two must-have skills and the location as written words.
  5. Add exclusions last, like -jobs or -intern, and check what disappeared.

Starter strings you can copy

Illustrative examples for Google. Swap in the titles, skills and places your hiring manager actually agreed to.

Public LinkedIn profiles

site:linkedin.com/in ("data engineer" OR "analytics engineer") (Snowflake OR dbt) "Chicago" -jobs -intern

GitHub profiles

site:github.com ("software engineer" OR developer) (Rust OR Go) "Toronto" -jobs

Resumes on the open web

(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) ("registered nurse" OR RN) ("ICU" OR "critical care") "Texas" -template -sample -jobs

Design portfolios

(site:behance.net OR site:dribbble.com) ("product designer" OR "UX designer") "Berlin"

Already have an X-ray string that is not working?

Paste it into Fix My Search, choose Google X-ray and get a corrected string you can copy, with a plain explanation of what changed. Free, no email required. Check the result before you use it.

Fix my search

Searching inside LinkedIn instead? Read the LinkedIn Boolean search guide or the full Boolean search cheat sheet.

More free recruiter tools

Reading is step one. These free Talent Lab tools do the work with you: