Google search techniques:
| Operator | Description | Example |
| + | Forcing a keyword (including stop words) | +this website |
| - | Excludes the keyword | websites -street |
| "” | Exact phase search | "website cube” |
| OR | One of the two must be in the result | websites or cube |
| ~term | Shows you the list of keywords related to the search term (they will be bold in the search page) | ~website ~cube // will show you keywords related to these two keywords |
| site: | Domain restricted search | Site:google.com //sites listed by google site:.com // all com sites site:a.com/b // results from this folder |
| inurl: allinurl: | Search term in the URL | inurl:seo inurl:company = allinurl:seo company |
| intitle: / allintitle: | Search term in page title | intitle:seo intitle:company = allintitle:seo company |
| inanchor: / allinanchor: | Search term in the most back links | inanchor:seo inanchor:company = allinanchor:seo company |
| intext: | Search term in the body text | intext:seo |
| ext: / filetype: | File type restricted search | filetype:pdf ext:pdf |
| * | Wild card search | seo * directory returns "seo free directory”, "seo friendlydirectory”, etc. |
| related: | Similar Sites search (25-31 results) | Related:google.com |
| info: | show you the page title and description, and invite you to view its related pages, incoming links, and page cached version | Info:webcube.ca |
| cache: | See what the page looked like when Google crawled it | Cache:webcube.ca |
| Link: | Sites pointing to your website | Link:webcube.ca |
- Advance search
- Combine these options:
- [site:yourdomain.com intitle:keyword1] + [site:yourdomain.com intitle:keyword2] (There should be no space between colon sign and the next word
Find the ".gov” URLs which let users post comments
site:.gov "write comments" | "post comment"
- Actual number of results:
- Note that the number of results Google 'thinks' it has and shows on the first page is usually incorrect. To get the exact number append "&start=990&filter=0”to page URL. It will show the last page of results and correct number.
- Uncover subscriber only/deleted content(say in experts exchange and other site) just plug in the URL (or go to Google translate
- Country specific result
- add "&gl=COUNTRY_CODE” at the end of the result
- US, CA, UK etc.
- add "&gl=COUNTRY_CODE” at the end of the result
- Usage
- Learn whether the site has canonicalization problems
- site:domain.com -inurl:www
- Find most powerful page for a keyword
- site:domain.com keyword
- Search for related forums
- inurl:forum OR inurl:forums seo
- You can come up with many more examples
Useful operators in other search engines
Yahoo Inlinks: For backlinks Bing Loc: Location specific search SEO loc:CA Bing Linkfromdomain: Outbound links Linkfromdomain:domain.com Bing IP: Find Your Neighbors Make sure no one is spamming, or your site's SEO performance may end up paying the penalty for sharing the same IP
- Learn whether the site has canonicalization problems
- Vocabulary:
- Stop words: words which are very common and Google won't use in the search query (for example and, for, or etc.)
- Vertical search engines (onebox search): for one type of search say image, video, map, news, blog, book, job etc.
- Having higher rank in these searches is comparatively easier, and it helps your "web” search
- Universal search / blended search: Integrating various vertical searches (Introduced in 2007 by Google
- Meta search engines: Combine results from major search engines. Ex. Dogpile, metacrawler. Not significant to SEO
