Traditionally the LinkedIn group search has been a rather basic affair, limited as it was to searching by group title and description.  That's great so long as those fields accurately portray every discussion that goes on in that group.  The likelyhood is of course that discussions will be much richer than any description can do justice to.

So it was nice to see LinkedIn announce an overhaul of their group search functionality on their blog this week.  The new functionality will allow you to get results based on the discussions within the groups as well as the meta information about the group.  In addition they show you which of your connections are also members of that group.

LinkedIn do appear to regard their groups as a key selling point given the addition of decent group analytics in recent times, so this is another step in the right direction.  Thus far the functionality is only available for a limited number of keywords, but you can try it out by searching for groups about social media, interview tips, or real estate.