For full disclosure, I pulled some of the content for this blog post from SpyFu’s Blog. Why? Because they did such a great job of not only writing about Google’s search Operators, but they also produced a video to help you understand how to use several of the Operators to help your business. You can read their blog, and watch the video at https://www.spyfu.com/blog/google-search-operators/.
Here are a few of the basic search operators to help you understand how to use them and why it will improve your Google search results.
“” (Quotes)
Putting your search term in quotes initiates an exact match search for that phrase. The exact words in that exact order have to be on the page or. Using it on single words excludes synonyms and related words.
AND
Google will search for results related to both/all terms that you've typed in the search field. Typically Google's algorithm will correctly estimate whether it's a phrase search or multiple separate terms, making AND mostly redundant.
- (Shift + minus key)
The hyphen (like a minus sign) helps you exclude words from your search queries. For example, you can search for “SEO California” but exclude “LA” if you don’t want results from that city.
Ý (Shift + 8 key)
The asterisk tells Google to “fill in the blank”. Similar to the more advanced AROUND(X) but you don’t specify the max length of a phrase. Like AROUND(X) it can be useful for finding quotes and phrases.
$
This operator helps you search for products by price.
You can also learn more about SEO on SpyFu’s Blog.
Here are some additional operators you may find useful…
filetype:
Restricts results to those of a certain filetype. E.g., PDF, DOCX, TXT, PPT, etc. Note: The “ext:” operator can also be used—the results are identical.
Example: apple filetype:pdf / apple ext:pdf
site:
Limit results to those from a specific website.
Example: site:apple.com
related:
Find sites related to a given domain.
Example: related:apple.com
intitle:
Find pages with a certain word (or words) in the title. In our example, any results containing the word “apple” in the title tag will be returned.
Example: intitle:apple
allintitle:
Similar to “intitle,” but only results containing all of the specified words in the title tag will be returned.
Example: allintitle:apple iphone
inurl:
Find pages with a certain word (or words) in the URL. For this example, any results containing the word “apple” in the URL will be returned.
Example: inurl:apple
allinurl:
Similar to “inurl,” but only results containing all of the specified words in the URL will be returned.
Example: allinurl:apple iphone
intext:
Find pages containing a certain word (or words) somewhere in the content. For this example, any results containing the word “apple” in the page content will be returned.
Example: intext:apple
allintext:
Similar to “intext,” but only results containing all of the specified words somewhere on the page will be returned.
Example: allintext:apple iphone
AROUND(X)
Proximity search. Find pages containing two words or phrases within X words of each other. For this example, the words “apple” and “iphone” must be present in the content and no further than four words apart.
Example: apple AROUND(4) iphone
weather:
Find the weather for a specific location. This is displayed in a weather snippet, but it also returns results from other “weather” websites.
Example: weather:san francisco
stocks:
See stock information (i.e., price, etc.) for a specific ticker.
Example: stocks:aapl
map:
Force Google to show map results for a locational search.
Example: map:silicon valley
movie:
Find information about a specific movie. Also finds movie showtimes if the movie is currently showing near you.
Example: movie:steve jobs
in
Convert one unit to another. Works with currencies, weights, temperatures, etc.
Example: $329 in GBP
source:
Find news results from a certain source in Google News.
Example: apple source:the_verge
#..#
Search for a range of numbers.
Example: wwdc video 2010..2014
blogurl:
Find blog URLs under a specific domain.
Example: blogurl:microsoft.com
SIDENOTE.
Google blog search discontinued in 2011
+
Force an exact-match search on a single word or phrase.
Example: jobs +apple
SIDENOTE.
You can do the same thing by using double quotes around your search.
#
Searches #hashtags.
Example: #apple
