Search Operator
What is Search Operator?
Search Operator – a text modifier that can be used in Google searches to return more specific results. Search operators essentially act as shortcuts to an advanced search.
Google search operators are special characters and commands (sometimes called “advanced operators”) that extend the capabilities of regular text searches. Search operators can be useful for everything from content research to technical SEO audits.
Advanced Google Search Operators
Here are the advanced Google search commands and operators you need to know.
Using the cache operator, you can find out what the most recent cache of a specified webpage is. This is useful for identifying when a page was last crawled.
Example use:
cache:websitename.com
allintext
This operator will help you find whether all the terms that you are looking for shows up in the text of that page. This operator, however, isn’t pin-accurate because it won’t look for text on the page that appears close together.
Example use:
allintext: content social links
Intext
This operator is a more global operator that allows you to find any terms showing up on a webpage in any area – like the title, the page itself, the URL, and elsewhere. This is useful if you want to perform research into how others’ on-page SEO footprints are being categorized by Google.
Example use:
word one intext: other term
Inposttitle
If you are performing blog research, this operator is useful for finding blogs with certain search terms in the blog title.
Example use:
inposttitle: weight loss goals
Allintitle
This search operator is a great way to find blogs that match the content you are writing about. For example, you could use allintitle to research what others are doing for that topic. Then, you could write your post to be better than theirs.
Example use:
allintitle: how to write content for SEO
Title
This is a narrower operator that will help you find more targeted results for specific search phrases. If you wanted to find pages that are all about “drawing with micron pens” for example, the following is how you would use it:
Example use:
intitle: drawing with Micron pens
Allinurl
This one allows you to find pages with your requested search terms within the URL in internal search pages. For example, say you wanted to perform research on pages on a site that had the terms “drawing tablet”. You would use the following:
Example use:
allinurl:amazon drawing tablet
This will bring up all internal URLs on Amazon.com that have the terms “drawing tablet”.
Inurl
If you wanted to find pages on a site that has your targeted search term in the URL, and the second term in the content on a website, you could use this operator. This is useful for finding sites with strong on-page optimization for the topics you are researching.
Example use:
inurl: drawing portraits
Allinanchor
This operator is useful for performing research on pages that have all terms after “inanchor:” in anchor text linking back to the page. Using this operator can help you find
Example use:
allinanchor: “how to draw anime”
Inanchor
It is possible to identify pages with inbound links that contain the anchor text specified. However, data is only sampled and doesn’t provide accurate global results.
Example use:
inanchor:”digital painting”
Filetype
Do you want to find images that only fall under a specific file type (e.g., .jpg, .png, or .gif)? This is a great way to narrow research on infographics or memes. But, it can also help you identify stray images and other files (like PDFs) that may have been picked up by Google.
Example use:
site:domainname.com filetype:txt – inurl:robots.txt
This will help you find files on your site that were indexed by Google but will exclude robots.txt from appearing in the search results.
Around()
Do you want to narrow the focus of your results to be super narrow? This is a great way to identify search results where two or more terms appear on the page, and appear very close to each other (denoted by the number in the parentheses).
Example use:
digital drawing AROUND(2) tools
Advanced Google Search Commands
Or
This command will help you search for pages that have one word or the other. If you wanted to find the words drawing or painting, but not both, you could use this command to do so.
Example use:
digital drawing OR digital painting
Quotes (“word”)
Using quotes around the phrases you are searching for will help you find results that are exact match results, rather than the broad results you will get with standard search.
Example use:
“search term 1”
Exclude Words: (-)
The minus sign is an exclusion symbol. This command will help you exclude words that you don’t want to appear in the search results. Say for some reason that you wanted to find pages that have the word content marketing but not pages from Business Insider that contain this phrase.
Example use:
“content marketing -businessinsider.com”
Add words: (+)
You can use a plus sign to add words that you want to be included in the search results.
Example use:
If you need more specific results that are catered to a single website, this command will help you bring those results up. For example, if you wanted to search your favorite SEO website for articles on 404 errors, you would use the following:
Example use:
“site:searchenginejournal.com 404 errors”
Related:
If you’re in a situation where you need any results that have more than one website with similar content to a site you are familiar with, just use the following:
Example use:
“related:domainname.com”
Info:
This one will help you find information related to the domain that you are searching for. It will help you identify things like pages with the domain text on-page (not necessarily linked), similar on-site pages, and the website’s cache.
Example use:
“info:domainname.com”
Conclusion
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By: Corporate Team