Google search is a very useful resource by itself. It is possible to use it to locate anything, however, did you realise that it is likewise possible to obtain more precise outcomes?
To get the most out of your search engine marketing, it’s essential to have an understanding of advanced Google search commands. By utilizing the correct search operator, your Google queries will be more effective and exact than they have ever been.
Using more specialized Google search commands can offer you valuable knowledge to help with your SEO reviews, material organization, keyword exploration, and more.
This guide is here to show you every single detail of the key Google advanced search operators, so that you can take full advantage of them.
What are Google search operators?
Google search operators are particular instructions and symbols that boost the power of typical text searches.
To make use of a search operator, just type it into the Google search bar (as if you are entering a regular text search).
Make your results much more specific
Using advanced search operators on Google will give you more precise results. Let’s say you search “SEO” on Google right now. You will get more than 730 million results!
If you employ the allintitle function, which is among the enhanced Google search commands that we will explain below, you can lessen it to merely 14.6 million outcomes, since you will only be displayed with results that have “SEO” precisely in the webpage heading.
Use advanced Google search operators to take your business to the next level
With search operators, you can:
- Find content and link building opportunities.
- Find SEO issues, such as glaring indexing errors.
- Find research and statistics to improve your content.
- Efficiently gauge how competitive certain long-tail keywords are.
Search operator rules to follow
There are two important ‘rules’ to follow when refining web searches:
- If punctuation is not part of the search operator, Google will usually ignore it.
- Avoid spaces between your symbol or word command and your search term. For example,
site:movingtrafficmedia.comwill work, however,site: movingtrafficmedia.comwill not work.
The best advanced Google search operators
It is significantly simpler to look for items on the web once you are familiar with utilizing Google search operators. Once you have become proficient in using these commands, you will question how you managed to use your computer before.
1. site:
You can use this operator to look for material hosted on a particular website.
If you only want to search through particular websites such as YouTube or Wikipedia, use site:youtube.com or site:wikipedia.org in your search query.
site: command use case
There are many use cases for this particular command. One of the most typical ways to find out how many pages Google has listed for a certain domain is to check.
2. cache:
In other words, the cache: operator allows you to find the recent saved version of a web page.
cache: command use case
This command will inform you when Google last crawled the new updates or design changes you have lately made.
3. related:
This search operator can be utilized to discover sites associated with the one under consideration. This technique is only helpful for extensive sites, like nytimes.com and searchengineland.com as demonstrated in the picture above.
related: command use case
Employ the related: command for a revealing survey into how Google arranges your webpage and the competition.
This is hugely advantageous when attempting to identify your online contenders – which could be quite different from your offline challengers.
4. inanchor:
This Google search operator is utilized when attempting to find webpages that have links with the expressed anchor text.
In the example, the search engine retrieves 1,370,000 results which would include any webpages that contain either “jon” or “clark” in the anchor text.
It should be acknowledged that the data is only sampled, and thus any global results will not be precise.
inanchor: command use case
This directive is beneficial when appraising link construction prospects or competitive link reviews.
5. allinanchor:
This command extends the inanchor: function mentioned earlier and can be useful when trying to locate web pages which contain every single word listed in the incoming anchor text.
For illustration, the results that are yielded when searching for pages with anchor text that contains both “jon” and “clark” have reduced to 991,000.
6. inurl:
If you want to locate a web page that has particular wording in the website address, the inurl: is the Google search operator you should employ.
inurl: command use case
This search command is extremely helpful for:
- Diagnosing indexing issues (
inurl:tagto identify indexed blog tag pages). - Content inspiration across topics you are researching.
- Identifying guest posting opportunities (
inurl:guest-post).
7. allinurl:
This Google search operator can refine the inurl: command so that it will give back only results which have all the keywords mentioned in the URL.
8. intitle:
This operator gives you the ability to find results that are more closely related to specific search terms or phrases. For the picture shown, the search showed over 27 million outcomes that had at least one of the words in the title of the page.
intitle: command use case
This search tool is beneficial for discovering potential avenues for guest posts and also judging the level of difficulty of particular keywords based on the amount of outcomes revealed for a phrase.
9. allintitle:
The allintitle: command filters the results even more, making sure that all of the words used in the page’s title are included.
For instance, the data that have all the words “write for us” have been reduced from 27,200,000 to 163,000.
10. intext:
Are you trying to find a particular word or phrase in the content? The intext: operator will help one to find occurrences of words and phrases wherever they appear on a website page, from the title to the body of the document.
intext: command use case
I tend to use this command the most to discover potential chances for link building. The illustration above reveals that there are above five hundred and twenty-two million webpages with either the words “sponsored” or “post” included.
The following search operators will help us refine our outcomes further.
11. allintext:
This operator will aid you in tailoring your search to only include web pages with all of the words you are looking for featured in the content of the page.
Changing the operator from intext: to allintext: dramatically cuts down the number of results to less than 200 million.
No attention is paid to the nearness or distance of the words on the page, only that they are present. Put differently, the words may not be in a group or near to one another in a sentence.
12. Exclude multiple phrases
This is the ultimate exact match exclusion operator.
You can keep out various phrases, which works in the same way as blocking out multiple words.
Employ the short dash (-) and quotation marks to incorporate multiple phrases.
13. Use an OR directive
If you don’t need an exact match but still want to refine your results, use the OR operator.
This indicates to Google that it should display outcomes with either X or Y. Input two terms and add OR between them in all capital letters.
It is crucial to be aware that in this case, the OR command will involve the phrases adjacent to it.
You can also employ the pipe character (|) instead of OR.
14. Get more results with wildcards
If you desire to acquire more results, you can employ the wildcard symbol. This is represented by an asterisk (*).
Using a wildcard in a phrase will give you all the different forms of that particular phrase.
If you desired to converse about peanut butter and jelly, you could employ the use of “and” or the symbol of an ampersand (&).
15. Include words
You are already aware that it is possible to omit words, but you can also choose to include them.
If you are looking for a specific subject and want to ensure that certain words are part of it, using a plus sign can help you out.
16. Find words near each other
This is an orderly query feature that is hardly ever utilized.
It’s called the AROUND(X) operator.
This operator allows you to obtain results where your words or phrases are located in close proximity to each other.
How many words at most can be between the two terms X?
17. Find synonyms
Here is another excellent means of attaining multiple outcomes associated with what you are trying to find.
If you put a ~ character before a word, the search results will include other words that have the same meaning.
So “holiday ~decorations” would give synonyms like “decor.”
18. Search multiple specific domain types
By applying the OR directive we discussed previously, you will be able to look for multiple categories of domains. Put the OR command and its keywords in parentheses.
19. Search hashtags
If you’re making any kind of promotional approach, you can take advantage of Google’s capabilities to showcase hashtags from social media websites.
Add the # symbol in front of the word you select.
20. Search using a range of numbers
Google has the capacity to present results within a chosen range of numbers.
You can define a range of numbers by choosing a floor and a ceiling, separated by two periods (..).
Google will provide you with answers that exist between the two given.
The utilization of this tool can prove to be beneficial if you’re researching any products. You can limit your search so that only items in a specific cost range appear.
21. Find keywords in page text
Results that include a certain keyword will be displayed when using the intext: operator, which is similar to the last two operators.
If you’re in search of articles, it is wise to familiarize yourself with and frequently employ this particular tool.
22. Find keywords in anchor texts
This one’s especially useful for SEO.
You can use the inanchor: operator to show webpages which have the designated word in the anchor text.
23. Find phrases in anchor texts
Allinanchor: works similarly to other “all” operators, displaying entire expressions in the hyperlink text.
It is likely that you will utilize this operator greater than the standard inanchor: operator. It’s a good tool to have at the ready.
24. Find keywords in URLs
Do you ever struggle to recall a website address? Do you need to search for webpages about a particular subject?
You can use the inurl: operator in both situations. When you enter a certain keyword, search results will be shown that feature that keyword somewhere in the web address.
25. Find content by certain authors
It can be argued that articles penned by influencers have much value. I really enjoy using influencer content in my articles by adding links to it.
It is simple and straightforward to discover material composed by particular individuals.
Searching for an article using the allinpostauthor operator can be done if you know who wrote it.
The inpostauthor: operator is basically unhelpful as it only functions with a single word and not a full phrase.
26. Narrow your search to a specific location
When you are doing SEO for a local company, location-focused searching should become your closest ally.
Searching for information with a specific geographic area in mind can be useful if you are trying to reach out to an audience that is largely situated in one place.
Utilize the loc: operator in conjunction with any particular place you want to focus on.
27. Exclude subdomains
Want to crawl through a site’s subdomains? You can use the inurl: and site: functions to refine your search and block out particular subdomains.
Any websites beginning with “www” will be filtered out of the search results.
28. Search within a date range
The daterange: operator will display results limited to the time frame you specify.
There’s one caveat though. The operator employs the Julian system instead of the more widespread Gregorian calendar.
29. Search by filetype
If you are searching for a certain type of file, you can utilize the filetype: operator.
This is a beneficial method if you are trying to find a specific kind of document, for example a case study, that generally has a specific filetype.
This search will return results for PDF files
Conclusion
Google has a lot of power. In fact, it’s more than most people realize.
You could argue that the virtually infinite worldwide resource is powered by Google.
It’s incredible how one can use Google’s capabilities to bolster search engine optimization.
Tailoring your Google searches can open up possibilities for you. You can observe your rivals and gain highly particular data.
Best of all, this is all 100% free. You have access to an immense amount of SEO information with no cost.
Search operators may not seem like a major component, however they can get your SEO aptitudes up and running rapidly.
