Wavelength let’s you find people in your network. This guide will help you tailor your searches to get the best results. If you are interested in learning more about Wavelength on a high level, check out What is Wavelength?
In this guide we will cover search populations, search queries, and results.
Search Populations
There are two types of search: single network, and multinetwork.
- Single Network
- Multinetwork
Single network search is when you search within one of your networks. Wavelength will return only members of that network. Most searches are single network searches.
Multinetwork search is when you leave a network and navigate to "Search All Groups". From there you can search all of your networks on Wavelength at once. This functionality appears when you have more than one network on Wavelength. At the multinetwork level, admin email and data edit functions are disabled.
Both single network and multinetwork search use the same intuitive search bar.
Search Queries
You search via a single search bar, much like Google. There are no filters or dropdowns. Instead Wavelength understands what you are looking for and returns the relevant results.
You can search for any data in a profile. Wavelength looks through the following fields and assesses if you query matches any of them.
- Location (City, State, Country)*
- Position
- Company
- School
- Degree
- Interest
- Industry
- Group
- Bio
- Class Year*
- First Name*
- Last Name*
- Email*
*There are special operators assigned to these fields to improve search.
You can mix and match all fields that do not have special operators. For instance if you want to find all the attorneys in New York, you can mix the city and position fields and search “new york attorney.”
Be careful! Some search terms have synonyms associated with them and some do not. Be sure to check variations of titles and locations to get best results (like attorney vs lawyer).
Special Search Operators and Features
Wavelength has a few search features that make it easier for you to find the people you want.
By Location
Wavelength understands what you search and if you are searching for a location, it will return all people within 50 miles of that search. There are some searches, like "boston" which are both a location and part of a name of a university. In this case searching "boston" will include both people that live within 50 miles of Boston, but also those that went to Boston University or worked at Boston Consulting Group.
If you want to limit your search to only locations use the "near" operator. Searching for "near boston" will return only the people within 50 miles of Boston and not people that attended Boston University or Boston Consulting Group. You can also use the near operator in more complex queries. So if you want to search for engineers within 50 miles of Boston, but not those that attended Boston University, search "engineer near boston."
By Class Year
Any 2 digit or 4 digit number is assumed to be a class year. So if you type 14 or 2014, all members of the class of 2014 will return.
You can string a number of classes together by separating them by commas. So if you want to find members of the class of 1986 and 2014 because they have a reunion coming up you can search “1986, 2014” and only people in those classes will return.
If you want to search for many adjacent classes at once, you can search them by putting a dash in between the first and last class year. For instance, if you want to search all the members of the classes from the 90s, you can search “90-99”.
Note you cannot combine adjacent class search with single class search (commas), and you can’t search multiple adjacent class queries at one time (eg “2015-2017, 2019-2020” will not work).
By Name
Sometimes you may know only part of someone’s name. Unlike normal search in which Wavelength will match fields with the full term, Wavelength search lets you use partial names to find people.
For instance, If you aren’t sure if someone is named Jon or Jonathan, a search for “Jon” will return both (But people named “John” will not). If you know Jon’s last name starts with a “Sm” you can search “Jon Sm” and all the Jon and Jonathan (and other names beginnng with Jon) with “Sm” at the start of their last name will return.
By Email
Curious about who has a certain email address? You can search the email address in the search bar. If there is a person in your network with that email address, they will show up in your results.
Admins can also search for emails that are invalid. If they search "invalid_email" all people in their network with an invalid email will show up. Wavelength knows which emails are valid or invalid based on its platform's email analytics. If emails have not been sent on the platform, admins will not be able to see invalid emails.
Special Admin Terms
There are a few terms admins can use to get certain types of people. These terms can be used in addition to any other search term. For instance, if you want to find people missing careers in the class of 2014, search "missing_career 2014"
| Term | Profile Characteristic |
| invalid_or_missing_email | Missing or invalid email |
| missing_phone_number | Missing phone number |
| missing_career | Missing career |
| missing_address | Missing street address (may have city, state) |
| missing_social_profile | Missing social profiles |
| has signed in | User has signed in |
| suspended | User has been suspended |
The following terms can be used like the ones above, or they can have the term "since" appended along with a date in the format MM/DD/YYYY. For instance "has donated since 4/10/2019" will include all the members that have donated since 4/10/2019.
| has donated | User profile has donations on it (either inputted via admin or automatically on donation) |
| has updated | User has updated their profile |
Search Results
Once Wavelength has matched your search query with results, its algorithm ranks your results based on relevance and relationship strength.
Relevance
Wavelength looks at the frequency of each search term to help rank the most relevant profiles. For instance, a profile that has the term “engineer” a couple times will rank higher than a profile that has many titles and the term “engineer” appears once.
Relationship Strength
It’s important that you keep your profile updated because Wavelength looks at your profile and assesses how well you might know the results and then weights your relationship with them. People that have worked or gone to school at the same place, are members of other networks together, or live in the same city, populate higher than those that do not.
Relationship strength matters because even if you do not know someone, the fact you have more things in common makes it easier to relate over shared experiences.
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