FAQ

 

 

Q. WHAT IS THIS SITE?

A. Boolean Blocks is a repository of x-ray searches for sourcing and recruitment.

 

Q. WHAT IS AN X-RAY SEARCH?

A. X-ray searching is a way of using search engines like Google and Bing to find pages from specific websites. For example, you can use X-ray search on Bing to find social profiles on LinkedIn.

 

Q. WHO IS IT AIMED AT?

A. It is aimed primarily at recruitment and sourcing professionals, although it can also be used for lead generation, marketing, or any application where you need to find social profiles matching a specific brief.

 

Q. WHAT MAKES Boolean Blocks DIFFERENT?

A. Instead of manually creating and editing Boolean strings, you combine pre-built searches as objects on a 2D canvas. This eliminates syntax errors, makes the query semantics more transparent, and offers a more effective way to optimize, save and share templates and best practices.

 

Q. IS IT FREE TO USE?

A. Yes.

 

Q. HOW DO I LOG IN?

A. You can authenticate using your Google account or create a new one specifically for the purpose.

 

Q. CAN I SAVE MY WORK?

A. Yes. Once you have logged in, you will have your own space for saving searches.

 

Q. CAN I SHARE MY WORK?

A. Yes, you can create a sharable link to any of your searches.

 

Q. IS THIS A NEW SEARCH ENGINE?

A. Not really – it functions as a meta search engine, agnostic of any particular search technology or platform. To execute a given query, your search is mapped to the syntax of the underlying database, e.g. Bing, Google, etc. You can choose which source to search via a drop-down control in the UI.

 

Q. WHAT SOURCES CAN I SEARCH RIGHT NOW?

A. If you are a recruiter, you can source social profiles via Google, Bing and Yandex. We provide a range of x-ray filters to allow you to source profiles on 3rd party sites, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, StackOverflow, etc.

 

Q. WHAT SOURCES CAN I SEARCH IN FUTURE?

A. In due course we will be rolling out other integrations, and the approach can be customised to search proprietary databases (for further details please contact us).

 

Q. WHAT IS THE SCIENCE BEHIND IT?

A. We have patents pending on the visual framework and the query suggestions algorithm. However, we remain committed to working closely with the scientific community and publishing as much of our work as possible in open access scholarly publications (for further details see our R&D page).