The Power of X-Ray

By Rich Bennett, AIRS Staff Writer

If you haven't heard of X-Ray, don't be surprised. You may have heard, however, that virtual communities are actually resources for millions of passive candidates - and they're free. Next, you'll want to know how to search them. That's where X-Ray comes in.

Searching for resumes or homepages on some virtual communities is easy; they have an on-site search engine, you plug in your keywords, and hit Go! Perhaps more often though, you'll find that there is no search mechanism on the site itself. Take a look at these two virtual communities: Angelfire or its sister site, Tripod. One noticeable difference between these communities and GeoCities is that only GeoCities has an on-site search engine, and that makes the search (which we call "front door" searching) easier to conduct. A site like Angelfire, however, requires using an outside search engine and using the X-Ray command. This is called "back door" searching because you can't get into the site through an obvious entrance. You have to use an off-site search engine, or "back door." Here's how it's done.

X-Ray Vision

X-Ray is a field search command that lets you look inside a server and view all the documents indexed there. (By index, we mean stored and filed. Documents on a specific Web site are filed and stored much like you store and file documents you've created on your own computer. The X-Ray command will bring all those documents out for viewing. Typically, most sites have some documents that are not accessible from their front (home) page or from links on their site. They are hidden from view, yet still publicly available on the Web. The X-Ray command brings back everything in a server, whether it's hidden or not. This is what makes X-Ray so powerful.

Kryptonite Can't Stop This Search

As you'll see, though, you don't have to be a detective to use the X-Ray command; it's really very simple. Let's start by searching for java programmers in Angelfire's Web site.

The AltaVista search engine is an AIRS favorite because of its superior ability to use Boolean logic. Click on the advanced search link on the AltaVista homepage. In the "Boolean query" box, type:

host:angelfire.com

The word host is a field search command. Field search commands search for keywords in certain parts of the document, for example, within the URL. In this case, the host command searches for the particular Web site in which you're looking for documents. In this case, we're looking in Angelfire.com's Web site, so we search the domain named angelfire.com.

Let's click Search and see what we find. Over twenty thousand results! That's a few too many documents to look through today. Now that we know this worked, let's refine our search string to obtain a more manageable group of results. Since we're looking for java programmers, let's use that phrase as a search term. Use quotation marks so that AltaVista will find the exact phrase.

host:angelfire.com AND "java programmer"

Just over a dozen results -- a much more manageable number. There are a few good results in here, too. A page entitled "No Title" belongs to Mohit Garg, a software engineer for NEC USA. HINT: To quickly find your keywords on the page, use the Find command. Here's how.

Hold down these two keys: Ctrl F on your keyboard, and type in the words you want to find. It will take you directly to that place on the page.

With only fifteen results, it's not really worthwhile to whittle the results down further. Let's take a different approach to the search, however.

First, go back to AltaVista, Advanced Search. In the "Boolean query" box, type:

host:angelfire.com AND title:resume AND java

Let's examine this string. The word title is another field search command that looks for keywords only in the title field of a Web page. You can see what any Web page is called by looking at the very top of your computer screen, next to the Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer icon. Intuitively, many people call the resume page of their homepage resume. As you know, homepages are resumes, but it can't hurt to look at the real McCoy. While this search won't find pages like Mohit's (if you'll remember, his page had no title), it found many other great resumes of people with java experience.

As you can probably imagine, the X-Ray command can be used in many ways. You can apply the same technique to companies, associations, user groups, and colleges -- to any Web site on the Net. Experiment with this new tool and open up a wealth of resources.

AIRS Glossary of Terms Used in This Article

AngelFire, Tripod and GeoCities - Virtual communities.

Boolean Logic - A set of Boolean Operators such as AND, OR and NOT, that make up a Boolean search string. Boolean search strings are what power your advanced searches on the Net.

Homepages - Personal pages that individual users create to describe themselves, their interests and skills. Such pages serve as invaluable resources for finding candidates on the Web since they often provide as much information as a resume. Sometimes the term is used to describe the starting page of a Web site.

Virtual Communities - Web sites that offer free homepages to the public and provide ways for people to share information, interact online and communicate with one another.

Java - Computer programming language.

-- Rich Bennett is the lead writer for AIRS Search Guides, Source Books and other original content for Internet recruitment. This article is reprinted by permission from AIRS, a global leader in Internet recruitment, tools, news and information. For more information on AIRS, please go to: http://www.CollegeRecruiter.com/pages/airs.php. Copyright © Hanover Capital Management Corporation 1997-2001. All Rights Reserved

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