If you know the related: command on Google, then you'll be excited to learn that Google has just expanded the maximum number of results from 30 to almost 200.  And if you don't know why that should be so important to sourcing, read on:

Shally and I have complimented Google for a number of its unique special commands, even before Shally issued the first of the sourcing cheatsheets four years ago (now GuruGuides), the one for Google.

Well, we should probably add this when we do our next periodic update:  Google has taken one of its few public semantic search features, the related: command, to a more valuable level.

You type related: in front of any domain name to find sites that Google thinks are very similar to it, based on content algorithms.  This has been a remarkably accurate command.  For example, if you type related:sensebot.net then it delivers a number of other semantic search engines.

From a recruiting perspective, it's very useful when you want to flesh out a list of sourcing target entities.  For example, if you follow the command with the domain name of a niche company (e.g., related:virtualiron.com), it returns the websites of other similar virtualization companies.  Even better, if you type the name of a niche industry conference or professional organization (e.g., related:vldb.org), it finds other similar conferences or organizations.  (It must have its own dedicated domain name for this to work well.)

The only negative was that Google only delivered a maximum of 30 similar sites per query, and you didn't get 30 different ones if you ran the search again.  But starting this week, Google now delivers up to 200 similar domains per query.  This lets sourcers expand their target lists dramatically.  Also previously, sometimes adding www. in front of the root domain delivered more or different results (e.g., related:www.scip.org vs. related:scip.org) but my tests so far indicate no difference in results since this week's improvement, so maybe they've fixed that quirk, too.

As Shally mentioned during his BlogTalkRadio appearance today, this would imply that Google has done some behind-the-scenes work to improve its algorithm behind the related: command, and so they are more confident with the kinds of results that you'll see for 31-200.  From my tests so far, I would agree:  you'll want to go to the end of page 2 (assuming you've set your Google preferences to display 100 results per page -- and why wouldn't you? It's just hurting your productivity to live with the default 10 results per page!)

Happy sourcing, and thank you, Google!