Google Search Operators – How to Find What You Need

As you may be aware, Google is a program, also known as an algorithm. It is optimized for use by regular users who type in certain words in order to find the things they want. After trying a few search words and phrases you may come to a junction where you cannot find the information that you want. If this happens to you then you can try talking to the search engine in a language that is a little closer to its “machine” code. You can do this by using the operators listed in this article.

Some people use operators such as these for devious means, such as finding sensitive information. One of the most commonly used techniques is:

intitle: “curriculum vitae” “phone” “address” “e-mail”

However, it is so overused, that if you were to copy and paste that example phrase into Google, you would find lots of website on how to hack, and why you shouldn’t hack.

Site

This restricts results to pages located within a specific field/domain.         

Example

Picture site:techtricksworld.com

This example will find all the pages within the site that have the word “Picture” or “Pictures” in them.

intitle

Restricts results to documents containing a given phrase within the title

Example

 intitle: postage fees

This find the words “postage fees” within the title of any searched documents.

allintitle

Restricts results to documents containing all the words searched for in the title.

Example

allintitle: grape trees

This will find all pages containing the both the words “grape” and “tree”.

Inurl

Restricts results to pages containing a given phrase within the URL.

Example

inurl: Apple sandwich

This will find the websites that have the word(s) “Apple” and/or “Sandwich” in.

Allinurl

Restricts results to pages containing all the sentences given in the URL.

Example

allinurl: broken window crack

This will find pages containing the words “broken”, “window” and “crack”. The order of the words may change, but each must be within the URL.

filetype:. ext  

This limits the results to a given document type.

Example

filetype: OpenUniversityPaper.pdf

This will find any documents that are called “OpenUniversityPaper”, but you can also use it to search for singular keywords within a file’s title.

numrange

This restricts results to documents containing text in their number of specified page.

Example

numrange :1-100 ghost

This will find the pages in a document containing the word ghost between the first and hundredth. The same result can be obtained by typing “1 .. 100 ghost” (without the quotation marks).

Link

Restricts results to pages containing links to a given page.

Example

link: www.Google.co.uk

This will retrieve documents containing at least one link to the page www.google.co.uk.

unanchored

Restricts results to pages containing a link that has certain words in it.

Example

inanchore: rope

This allows you to find documents containing the word “Rope” within a links description (which is also known as the anchor text. It does not search out keywords within the link‘s URL.

allintext

Restricts results to documents containing text in a given sentence regardless of title, links and urls.

Example

allintext: “maple”

It will find documents containing the phrase “maple” only in the text.

+

This symbol imposes a frequent presence in the sentence given in the results. If you want the search engine to favor a certain word above all others then use this symbol.

Example         

+ carrot

Example

Apple, cheese, +carrot, rice

In both examples the word carrot would be given priority over all other keywords, however the search would not be exclusive. You may still find results that do not have the word “carrot” in.

–

This will remove the chosen keyword from the results. It cannot be used correctly on its own, it needs to be with other keywords.

Example

Dog, bitch, -puppy

In this example you would receive lots of websites related to dogs, but the word “puppy” would not appear in the search engine results.

“” 

Allows you to search all the sentences that are indexed, and not just words that are in the meta description, title, url, etc. It will exclusively search for web pages with those specific words in, and will provide you with less synonym alternatives.

Example

“spellcheck software” 

The search engine would find all web pages and all indexed documents containing the phrase “spellcheck software”.

.          

This will search for words within the same sentence that are separated by other words.

Example

Happy.park

It will find web pages and documents that have the words “Happy” and “Park” in the same sentence, with either one appearing first. For example, “My dog was happy in the park”, or “If I get to park my car then I will be happy”.

|

This is known as the logical OR function, which is known by many programmers as a set, “And, if, and if, unless, or”.

Example

Broken rim| damaged tire

Here is would search out pages that either have the phrase “Broken rim” or “Damaged tire”. However it would not show you pages that contain both key phrases.

It’s really very useful tools when you want to quickly find the information you need.

From my experience

There is a valuable tool that will allow you to construct your query and make it the most targeted. I recently discovered it and since then I use it both for work and for personal purposes. It is called Advangle (advanced Google). It is simple and convenient builder of complex web-search queries. With a help of Advangle you can build queries with multiple parameters (“language”, ”domain”, ”Page text”, etc.) and see Google or Bing SERP for your query. Why is it convenient? First of all, Advangle is easy to use. Second plus is that you can save your results and use them later. Any condition can be disabled without removing so you can try several combinations and choose the most suitable for you. It’s very useful tool for bloggers, guest bloggers, seo specialists and ordinary search engine users. Enjoy!

Author bio:
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Korah Morrison, writer essay writing services that help students to write essays of any complexity.
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