People who put business before pleasure in their social media activities should know that LinkedIn is the place to go. The social network estimates that its users conducted 5.7 billion searches in 2012, looking for professional contacts, jobs or companies. In a bid to improve further the search experience and the quality of results, LinkedIn has introduced a number of features aimed at making the search process even smarter and leaner.
The roll-out began at the start of this week and the new search will be globally available within weeks. LinkedIn said that it had streamlined the search process further by eliminating the need to look for people, companies or jobs separately. Users will now be able to get a comprehensive list of results by simply typing their query into the search box. The new features added by LinkedIn are designed to create an even smarter search.
The auto-complete feature will present users with potential matches and the engine will get better at predicting as the number of searches grows. The availability of suggested searches means that users will see example search queries related to their own. It will also offer a preview of the most relevant results, making the search a one-click process. There is also the addition of a smarter query intent algorithm, which means that the search engine will learn from previous searches and get to understand better the intent of the user.
LinkedIn has also given its advanced search a new look while expanding search options with filters for location, company, school and others. Finally, the introduction of automated alerts makes it possible to save searches and receive alerts in case the results change.