New Search Exclusions Are Coming To Sales Navigator
This may be the biggest search improvement in years for Linkedin. Later this quarter Linkedin will be rolling out the ability to do search exclusions in Sales Navigator.
Here’s a gif from the product team showing what it will look like:
How will it work?
Let’s take a look at what the product release text says about the new search feature. It’s brief:
“Improve your Advanced Search results by selecting the terms that you want to remove from your search. This gives you more control over your search terms, providing more relevant results and a more intuitive search experience.”
Scenario
Let’s say…I want to see all my first degree connections. But I don’t want to see anyone in the consulting industry. Or anyone who I’ve already tagged as “converted to sales funnel.”
To get that list I’d have to view my first degree connections, select every industry other than consulting and select every tag except “converted to sales funnel.” If you’ve ever tried, you know creating that search will take forever and the page will never load. The url’s too long and it gets buggy.
Wait – Can’t you currently exclude things from search?
Yes, but in a very limited way. There are presently two ways to exclude things in search.
Using the NOT Boolean
Or the three built in search exclusions:
1.) Remove Saved Leads from search
2.) Remove viewed Leads from search
3.) Remove contacted Leads from search
The shortcoming is that there’s no way to exclude any categories with pre-determined options. You must include every option other than what you want to exclude. This is a pain point when wanting to exclude things like industry, tags, seniority level, company headcount, years in current position, and function.
Search exclusions mean…
Better search results a heck of a lot faster.
Which fields will have exclusions?
At present we don’t know exactly which search fields will have the new exclusion feature so we’ll have to speculate until the rollout fully happens. Almost certainly it will be search fields with pre-determined options – not type text. Assuming it’s more than just industry (which is shown in the product gif), strong candidates are seniority level, company headcount, years in current position, function, and tags. Of those, tags may be on the chopping block since they’re customizable (it’s a tech thing).
