With people starting to increase their professional connections, LinkedIn that has spent a year creating a better way to help members access jobs, groups, companies, and people, introduced its more substantive search functions to its web interface on Monday, March 25th, 2013.
LinkedIn, a social networking website for people in professional occupations. Founded in December 2002 by Reid Hoffman and founding team members from PayPal and Socialnet, and launched on May 5, 2003, is mainly used for professional networking.
With 5.7 billion professionally oriented searches were done on LinkedIn last year, every day, users see millions of professionals find others and get found through LinkedIn search. Whether the user is searching for people, jobs, companies or groups, LinkedIn search has provided the most relevant results based on the user's professional identity, network, and how the people in his/her network engage with LinkedIn.
With the new search feature update, the company has unified the search experience so users now no longer need to search for people, companies, or jobs separately. What the user needs to do now is just type what he/she is looking for into the search box and he/she will see a comprehensive page of results that pulls contents across the LinkedIn professional site.
"We're bringing all of the goodness on LinkedIn - people, companies, jobs, and groups - and putting it all together in one place," said Bradley Mauney, product lead for identity products at LinkedIn.
The major updates that comes with the new search are:
- Auto-complete - User searches will prompt options for what the search is predicting. The more searches done, the better it will get at predicting what the user wants.
- Suggested searches - Searches now show queries for people or jobs related to the user input, as well as a preview of top results.
- Smarter query intent algorithm - The more a user search for content on LinkedIn, the more it learns and understands their intents over time to provide the most relevant results.
- Enhanced advanced search - The new redesigned looks also deepens search with filters like location, company, school and more.
- Automated alerts – User can save time by saving their searches, and the search feature will alert users alert when the results change.
"Search on LinkedIn is getting even smarter and more streamlined," the company said in its blog post.
LinkedIn users no longer have to indicate, using a menu, whether they are searching for a person, job or company. The new search function that includes auto-complete and suggested related searches will make searches on LinkedIn a lot easier and friendlier.
The New Approach Solution
The changes for the search feature aren't radical, but they do target members to do more, stay longer, and explore various types of content, that they may have ignored before. As a result, LinkedIn that has gone public in 2011 is moving away from being a network of connections to a giant knowledge exchange by directing people toward content they didn't know existed.
By making search friendlier, LinkedIn's move could positively impact the bottom line by helping its share price. Better search may make an even bigger impact on LinkedIn's #1 source of revenue: Talent Solutions. The professional social network made more than 50 percent of its fourth-quarter revenue from Talent Solutions, a product it sells to companies and recruiters that need to list and fill positions.
"Search is already a core part of our monetization model," Mauney said. "We're hoping users will find the new search more compelling...and find more people and more jobs." The jobs ecosystem, he said, will directly benefit from increased engagement.
LinkedIn now sees an average of 475 million searches a month, according to the company. The network that has 200 million members in more than 200 countries and territories has broadened its search to advance its professional social market.