The result mentioned the search terms, but it did not match the intent of my search – which is to find people who have been responsible for configuring routers. servers), and who make 1 mention of the word “router” in their skill summary because they have a router at home (but no paid professional experience). That would be what I call a false positive hit. Without forcing some variant of the word “configure” to be within 5 words of “router” or “routers,” you can just as earily return results of people who do not mention that they have been specifically responsible for configuring routers – you could end up finding people who mention that they’ve configured other things (e.g. This functionality is HUGE, as it allows sourcers and recruiters to drastically increase the relevance of search results by targeting people based on their responsibilities rather than basic keyword search (aka buzzword bingo). Lucene supports configurable proximity search – or the ability to find words that are a within a specific distance from each other (3 words, 8 words, your choice). For example, if you wanted to find people who mention that they have experience configuring routers, you can use Lucene’s proximity search functionality via the tilde symbol (~) to target phrases where some mention of config* is made within 5 words of router or routers. Lucene supports single and multiple character wildcard searches within single terms. That means you could search for the term develop* and LinkedIn would return results of people who mention every word that begins with the root of “develop:” develop, developed, developing, developer, develops, etc. That would mean no more having to type out long OR statements where you have to think about all of the different ways a particular term can be written. I’m glad you asked – be prepared to be amazed! Wildcard Searches I was then able to dig up an article that verified that LinkedIn had implemented Lucene as their text search engine. ![]() Although TechCrunch reported that LinkedIn upgraded its people search, they failed to mention the technology behind the upgrade. Had they already implemented Lucene, or were they looking to do so? I did some research to see if I could confirm a link between LinkedIn with Lucene (pun intended). Then I watched the video again the other day (not exactly sure why) and I it made me curious. I figured if they were already using Lucene for their text search engine they would offer all of Lucene’s search functionality, which they don’t. When I first watched the video, I never gave the Lucene stuff a second thought because LinkedIn doesn’t actually offer any of Lucene’s truly advanced search functionality – LinkedIn doesn’t even support root-word/wildcard searching, let alone extended Boolean search. LinkedIn uses Lucene as their Text Search Engine ![]() Lucene is an open source text search engine that I’ve written about in multiple posts for its advanced search functionality, including extended Boolean. If you ignore the information regarding the new features and pay close attention to the video, you can hear Esteban talk about how LinkedIn is always on the lookout for talented Lucene Open Source engineers and watch him search for them. Have you ever really watched the video clip below that you can find on LinkedIn’s Learning Center as well as on YouTube? I’m excited to tell you, but quite honestly, I actually can’t believe it’s taken me this long to put 2 and 2 together. ![]() Did you know that LinkedIn currently has the ability to deliver incredibly powerful search functionality to its users – WELL beyond what we all have access to now? What am I talking about?
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