Google Search basics

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.

 

 

 

    • 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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • 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

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