Linkedin XRay search with Googler. Or Google search anything in a programmatic way.

Installation for Mac

Requires Python 3.3 or later

$ git clone https://github.com/jarun/googler/
$ sudo make install

Installation for Linux

$ git clone https://github.com/jarun/googler/
$ cd googler

Video Tutorial

Running googler

It runs as a standalone program:

$ ./googler

If you run it with no options you will get this:

Please initiate a query.
googler (? for help)

To exit hit Enter twice.

Options

To show the help documentation:

$ ./googler -h

Xray Linkedin search with Googler

 

 

This will show an output with all the options. Some are explained here…

Show N results

Use the option -n to get a number of results like this:

$ -n 50

Show results from the News section

Many options are case sensitive. If you want to get results from the news section use this:

$ -N

Use this option to get the results that are country specific using the top level domain (TLD).

For example if you want results from Canada:

$ -c ca

Or results from Brazil:

$ -c br

These are a few popular TLDs:

  • Worldwide,com,google.com
  • Brazil,br,google.com.br
  • Canada,ca,google.ca
  • Chile,cl,google.cl
  • Colombia,co,google.com.co
  • France,fr,google.fr
  • Mexico,mx,google.com.mx
  • Netherlands,nl,google.nl
  • United Kingdom,uk,google.co.uk
  • United States,us,google.us

Show results in a specific language:

Use this option to show results in a language.

For example, Spanish:

$ -l es

To get the correct syntax search “List of ISO 639-1 codes”

  • English: en
  • Spanish: es
  • Portugues: pt

Disable automatic spelling correction

Use this option:

$ -x

Disable color output

This will be helpful to save the results to a file. You don’t have to understand what this is but just be aware that it’s important.

$ -C

Search with a time limit

Use this option:

$ -t

Using this syntax:

  • h5 = 5 hours
  • d5 = 5 days
  • w5 = 5 weeks
  • m5 = 5 months
  • y5 = 5 years

Search a specific site

Use the option:

$ -w

Or also this one:

$ --site

For example:

$ ./googler --site linkedin.com/in 'data scientist'

Xray Linkedin search data scientist

 

 

The default number of results is 10. Let’s change that to 20:

$ ./googler --site linkedin.com/in -n 20 'data scientist'

Disable user agent

This is important. The program uses the user agent to simulate Firefox on Ubuntu:

USER_AGENT = ('Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0')

If you want to disable it for any reason use this option:

--noua

To get output in JSON format

Use this option for JSON format

--json

Search and Exit

This is important when saving the output to a file. It will search and exit. It will not show the prompt.

-np

To search with filetype

This is the same as searching using Google:

$./googler 'data science' filetype:pdf

Saving the results to a file

To understand how saving works, you need to know some basic Linux commands.

Read my tutorial from zero to hero in Linux.

Save the results to a text file:

$./googler -C 'data science' filetype:pdf > dm.txt

When it’s done, the prompt will move down twice. Hit Enter twice to exit.

The option -C disables color output. Otherwise you will get a mess of data. You don’t have to understand what this means. Just use it :)

Ok Padawan. Now let’s do a few more examples:

$ ./googler -C -w linkedin.com/in -n 50 'machine learning' > ml_li.csv

Open the file with Sublime Text.

You can download Sublime from here.

You could convert this “raw file” into a CSV file using a Regex macro.

Read my tutorial to create a regex macro in Sublime.

You can use this macro to convert the Linkedin Xray search result to a CSV file.

Xray Linkedin search sublime macro

 

 

For the Rules-User:

{
    "format": "3.0",
    "replacements": {
        // replace comma with semicolon
        "linkedin_url_replace_comma": {
            "find": ",",
            "replace": ";",
            "greedy": true
        },
        // add 3 empty lines between profiles
        "linkedin_url_3_lines": {
            "find": "^\\n",
            "replace": "\\n\\n\\n",
            "greedy": true
        },
        // join url, city and description
        "linkedin_url_join_url_city": {
            "find": "^(http.*)\\n(.*)\\n(.*)",
            "replace": "\\1,\\2,\\3",
            "greedy": true
        },
        // join name with url
        "linkedin_url_join_name_url": {
            "find": " \\| Professional.*\\n",
            "replace": ",",
            "greedy": true
        },
        // remove leading number
        "linkedin_url_leading_number": {
            "find": "^ [0-9]{1,3} ",
            "replace": "",
            "greedy": true
        },
        // remove empty lines
        "linkedin_url_remove_empty_lines": {
            "find": "^\\n",
            "replace": "",
            "greedy": true
        },
        // remove last googler line
        "linkedin_url_remove_googler_line": {
            "find": "^googler.*",
            "replace": "",
            "greedy": true
        }
    }
}

For the Commands-User

[
    {
        "caption": "Reg Replace: Googler Linkedin CSV",
        "command": "reg_replace",
        "args": {"replacements": ["linkedin_url_replace_comma",
        "linkedin_url_3_lines","linkedin_url_join_url_city",
        "linkedin_url_join_name_url","linkedin_url_leading_number",
        "linkedin_url_remove_empty_lines",
        "linkedin_url_remove_googler_line"]}
    }
]

Xray Linkedin search sublime macro

 

 

Activate the macro with the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+P and typing Reg Replace: Googler Linkedin CSV.

Then open the CSV file in Excel.