Google search operators can be extremely useful:
They can help you find what you’re looking for faster and help you with many tasks related to SEO and content marketing .
The problem is :
There are usually very few search operators, and even if you already know some, you may not be taking full advantage of them.
And more importantly:
Most of the articles, lists and tables that exist on the topic are outdated and contain many operators that no longer work.
Not so in this post:
I have personally tested each of the 46 search operators on my list. I’ve also put together 25 easy tips for you to implement that will save you a ton of time in content marketing and SEO.
Table of Contents
1. What are search operators?
Search operators are (and I say this with all propriety), a relic of the past since in those days Google did not offer results as accurate as it does today. These are special characters, Boolean operators , or words with a colon after them, which you enter into Google along with a search term (single word or phrase) to specify your search queries.
Unfortunately, Google has abolished numerous search operators in recent years, such as the tilde (~) in 2013. On the one hand, this has to do with the fact that the search engine algorithm becomes increasingly intelligent and the The need for operators is no longer so great. On the other hand, features in search were disabled , such as Google’s blog search in 2011, which also spelled the end for many operators. An overview of all operators that are no longer working can be found in Section 5.
2. Basic search operators:
Here you will find all the basic search operators , which are either Boolean operators or consist of a single special character:
Search Operator: “search term”
Description : Quotes will only show pages that contain a keyword in the exact spelling.
Example: “Walt Disney” (you will only see results for the founder of Disney instead of the group)
Search operator: Or or |
Description : If you want to get results for two different terms at the same time, use this search operator. Instead of “OR”, you can also use “|”
Example: Darth Vader or Dart Maul
Search Operator: Y
Description : Returns pages containing both keywords. Since Google provides results for both terms even without AND, this operator only makes sense in conjunction with other terms.
Example: Darth Vader or Darth Maul
Search Operator: –
Description: With the minus sign, you can specifically exclude a term so as not to direct the search query in the wrong direction. This makes sense especially when several terms are closely related.
Example: George Lucas – “star wars” (should I look for another Georg Lucas that has nothing to do with Star Wars?)
George Lucas – “star wars” -lucasfilm -director (so you also exclude the director and Lucasfilm to get best results)
Search Operator: *
Description : Can be used as a placeholder anywhere.
Example: Crepes with * (to know what fillings or garnishes you can eat u> crepes with )
Search operator: ()
Description: The two square brackets can be used to group search terms and link them to another search term. This is useful if you only want to display two or more general terms relating to exactly one topic. OR/AND is usually used in square brackets.
(Ewan McGregor OR Alec Guinness) (this is how Example you will see the search results for the two actors, used only in his role as Obi Wan Kenobi)
Search operator: $ or €
Description : A price-related search can be performed with the dollar or euro symbol.
Example: Star Wars Lego Millennium Falcon € (only search results that are linked to a price for the Millennium Falcon will be displayed)
Search Operator: _
Description: Autocompletion in Google can be best controlled with an underscore as it takes on a placeholder function at the desired location.
Example: darth_ star wars (this is how Google Autocomplete would list all the Sith Lords, such as Darth Vader or Darth Maul)
Search Operator: # .. #
Description : This operator can be used to limit the search to a specific time period or numerical range.
Example: star wars movies 2000..2020 (only shows movies from 2000 to 2020)
Also Read: What Is Content Delivery Network (CDN) and How Does It Work
3. Search for specific parts of web pages.
Here you will find advanced Google search that you can use to search for words or phrases in specific parts of web pages (such as anchor texts, URLs, the text or the title). This is useful for making search results even more relevant to the keyword entered or for finding pages optimized for a specific keyword:
Search operator: inanchor:
Description : Only shows pages that link to another page with a specific anchor text.
Example: inanchor:mcgregor (only displays pages that contain a link to mcgregor in the anchor text)
inanchor:mcgregor star wars (only displays pages that contain a link to mcgregor in the anchor text and are relevant to Star Wars)
Search operator: allinanchor:
Description: It works like inanchor: with the difference that all the words must appear in the anchor text (but not in the exact order).
allinanchor: mcgregor star wars (only shows pages that contain a link with mcgregor, star and wars in the anchor text)
Search Operator: In Text:
Description: Displays only pages that contain a specific word in the text.
Example: intext: mcgregor (only shows pages that contain mcgregor in the text)
intext: mcgregor star wars (only shows pages that contain mcgregor in the title and are relevant to Star Wars)
Search operator: allintext:
Description: Works like intext: with the difference that all the words must appear in the text (but not in the exact order).
Example: allintext: mcgregor star wars (only shows pages that contain the words mcgregor, star and wars in the text)
Search operator: intitle:
Description: Displays only pages that contain a specific word in the title.
Example: intitle: mcgregor (only shows pages that contain mcgregor in the title)
intitle: mcgregor star wars (only shows pages that contain mcgregor in the title and are relevant to Star Wars)
Search operator: allintitle:
Description: Works like a title: except that all the words must appear in the title (but not in the exact order).
Unfortunately, allintitle: does not work well in combination with many other operators.
Example: allintitle: mcgregor star wars (only shows pages that contain the words mcgregor, star and wars in the title)
Search operator: inurl:
Description: Displays only pages that contain a specific word in the URL.
Example: inurl: mcgregor (only shows pages that contain mcgregor in the text)
inurl: mcgregor star wars (only shows pages that contain mcgregor in the title and are relevant to Star Wars)
Search operator: allinurl:
Description: Works like inurl: with the difference that all the words must appear in the title (but not in the exact order).
Example: allinurl: mcgregor star wars (only shows pages that have the words mcgregor, star and wars in the URL)
Also Read: 10 Smart Ways to Earn or Build Backlinks for Your Website
4. Other search operators:
Search Operator: around (x)
Description: Displays pages containing two keywords separated by a certain distance. The x indicates how many other words can be found between the two keywords.
Example: ewan mcgregor around (3) alec guinness (to find sites that mention Ewan McGregor and Alec Guiness close together)
Search Operator: Cache:
Description: Shows the latest cache of a website.
Example: cache: disney.de
Search operator: define:
Description: This search operator displays the search term in the Google dictionary (in a box above the search). It only works for general terms.
Example: define: disney
Search operator: ext:
Description: Displays pages that have a certain file extension.
Example: star wars ext: pdf
Search Operator: File Type:
Description: Displays pages with a specific file type. It can be combined with ext.
Example: star wars file type: pdf
Search Operator: in
Description : A converter within the search results. If you want to convert one unit of measurement to another, you can use this operator.
Example: €100 in $ or 1000 m in km
Search operator: image size:
Description : With this operator you can limit the images displayed to a certain format in Google image search. The image size is entered according to the scheme: width x height (in pixels).
Example: Star Wars wallpaper images : 1920 × 1080
Search Operator: Location:
Description : Only displays articles in Google News related to a specific location.
Example: location: Munich
Search operator: map:
Description: This operator forces Google to display map data for a search term.
Example: map: hollywood
Search operator: movie:
Description: If you are looking for information about a movie, you can use this operator. As long as you’ve given permission to determine its location, the hours of nearby movie theaters are displayed.
Example: movie: black widow
Search operator: related:
Description : This operator helps you find pages or websites similar to the one you entered. Often it only works with older or more well-known websites.
Example: related: starwars-union.de (Shows websites that are similar to the Star Wars Union fan site)
Search Operator: Site:
Description: One of the most famous and important search operators that limits results to a specific domain.
Example: site: projektstarwars.de (only searches one of the most famous German-speaking Star Wars forums)
Search Operator: Source:
Description : With the help of the source: You can restrict the messages displayed within Google News to a specific source.
Example: Avengers source: tv spielfilm (only news about Avengers the TV Spielfilm is shown here)
Search operator: stocks
Description: Displays information about the actions in the search results.
Example: shares: disney
Search Operator: Weather
Description : Displays the weather at a specific location above the search results.
Example: time: hollywood
5. Operators that no longer work (good):
Below we show you a list of Google search operators that have been discontinued over time or that offer not so good results:
Search Operator: @
Description: By adding @ before a word, you can search social networks. However, the operator only brings mixed results.
Discontinued: unknown
Search Operator: ~ (Tilde)
Description : This operator was used to include synonyms of the search term in the results.
Discontinued: 2013
Search operator: #
Description: This operator was originally introduced for Google+, but was abolished again when the social network was discontinued.
Discontinued: 2019
Search Operator: +
Description: This operator was used to allow exact searches for a phrase or word. So it had the same function as “search term”.
Discontinued: 2011
Search Operator: Blog URL:
Description: Within the now discontinued Google Blog Search, you can use this operator to find all blogs running under a certain domain.
Discontinued: 2011
Search Operator: Date Range:
Description: This operator displayed pages that were published within a given time period.
Discontinued: unknown
Search operator: info:
Description: This operator displayed results with information about a specific page.
Discontinued: 2017
Search operator: loc:
Description: The purpose of this operator was to provide local results for a search term.
Discontinued: unknown
Search Operator: inpostauthor:
Description: Within the now discontinued Google Blog Search, this operator could be used to specifically search for contributions from a specific author.
Discontinued: 2011
Search operator: allinpostauthor:
Description : Similar also inpostauthor: Here, however, exactly the full name was taken into account.
Discontinued: 2011
Search operator: inposttitle:
Description : Posts were found in Google blog search that had special words in the title.
Discontinued: 2011
Search operator: link:
Description: The goal was to find pages that reference a searched URL. Although it still provides results today, they are often inaccurate.
Discontinued: 2017
Search Operator: Phone Book:
Description: With the help of this operator, you can search for a person’s phone number.
Discontinued: 2010
6. OnPage SEO (1 – 9)
The first 9 tips are about OnPage SEO . For example, how you can use Google search operators to find indexing problems and improve your internal links:
1. Find out how many of your pages are indexed
The first step to find indexing problems is to enter the site: yourdomain.de </ u¡i> in Google . This is how you can see how many search results are in Google’s index.
This number should not be much greater than the number of articles and/or pages on your blog. If you’ve written 100 blog articles but have 2,000 pages in the index, you probably have a problem.
To this it should be said:
The number of search results displayed is not 100% accurate. Our blog shows 251 results, but Google Search Console only shows 79.
Clicking on the 8th page of search results, it turns out that there are only 8 pages of search results with 79 results.
To know exactly how many of your pages are indexed, take a look at Google Search Console; You can also use URL verification in Google Search Console for a single page.
2. Check that affiliate links are indexed.
If you want to manage affiliate links or redirects and monitor the performance of your website, use plugins like Pretty Links or Thirsty Affiliates and they are excellent. However, if the configuration is incorrect, they can be indexed unnecessarily (if incorrectly configured as a 301 redirect instead of a 302 or 307 redirect). You can find out if this is your case by entering inurl: deinedomain.de/affiliate-praefix/ into Google.
Note : Of course, this assumes that your plugin is configured so that all affiliate links have a prefix.
3. Search category and tag pages .
WordPress category and tag pages do not belong to Google ‘s index in 90% of cases.
The reason for this is simple:
For all keywords and topics, category and tag pages do not have the best search result. So you can know if the tags and categories have landed in the index, first take a look at WordPress Settings > Permalinks, this way you will be able to see the category and keywords you chose.
Then enter the following into Google:
• site: deinedomain.de/category (replace the category with your own category base if necessary)
• site: deinedomain.de/tag (replace the tag with your own keyword base if necessary) necessary)
• site: deinedomain.de inurl: archive (find archive pages on your website)
• site: deinedomain.de inurl: page (find pagination pages on your website)
4. Search the index for unwanted documents (for example, gifts).
There are some documents that you want to keep secret from your readers or that you have uploaded to your website at some point and then forgotten about. These include, for example:
• Online course materials .
• Paid e-books .
• Freebies (which should really only be available after you subscribe to the newsletter).
• Readme files.
• Internal PowerPoint presentations or PDF files.
You can find such files with the following search command:
site: deinedomain.de (file type: pdf | file type: txt | file type: ppt | file type: xls)
Tip: You can download freebies online without having to subscribe to newsletters (just don’t tell anyone you read it here).
5. Examine your page for placeholder content.
As a rule, you should definitely avoid content that is used more than once on different pages, because Google can see it as duplicate content.
Really true:
Placeholders, like the famous “Lorem ipsum” text or sample content, like the “Hello World” post in WordPress , are often forgotten to delete. Even on reputable websites like Encylopedia Britannica:
To search for placeholder text on your website, you can use the following combination of operators:
• site: deinedomain.de “Lorem ipsum”
You can find the example post created during WordPress installation in the following ways:
• site: deinedomain.de “Welcome to WordPress. This is your first publication. Edit or delete it, and start writing! “
• site: deinedomain.de “Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start writing.”
• site: deinedomain.de “Hello world”
• site: deinedomain.de “Hello world”
This is how you can find the sample page created during the installation:
• site: deinedomain.de “Sample page”
• site: deinedomain.de “example page”
• site: deinedomain.de “example page. It is different from a blog post because it will stay in one place and appear in your site navigation”
• site: deinedomain.de “example site. It differs from publications because it always remains in the same place “
6. Look for duplicate content on your website.
Google and users want to see unique content. There are no texts from 08-15 that can be read anywhere or that have been stolen from another website. Online stores in particular often have problems with so-called duplicate content. Product descriptions or categories are often copied from other online stores or the manufacturer.
And according to the scheme -site: deinedomain.de “text” entered in Google (you must exclude your online store from the search with the minus sign).
AHA! More than 4000 results.
That is, many people have made no effort to make their item descriptions unique.
Tip : Of course, you can proceed in the same way to expose other website operators who have copied your texts.
7. Check the SSL status of your website.
In the context of SEO , you should not only keep an eye on the competition, but also your own website. A very important point in “on-page optimization” is converting your website to HTTPS. To find out if Google has already indexed your entire website with the new URLs with HTTPS or perhaps has not even changed parts of your website to HTTPS, you can simply use the combination of site: yoururl.de inurl: http or alternatively , site: deinedomain.de – inurl: use https .
An investigation by Spiegel ONLINE shows, for example, that its senior portal has not been converted to SSL :
8. Find out if your website has been hacked.
90% of the time a website is hacked, they are used to generate advertising revenue. For this purpose, all or part of your website is redirected, or hackers create hundreds or miles of new pages that try to get into Google’s index.
It may also be that the advertising is simply injected into your existing pages. In some cases, such a trick is unfortunately not obvious and, if it goes unnoticed for too long, it can hurt your Google rankings. The following search command can help you find out if your website has been hacked:
Site: deinedomain.de viagra OR porn OR casino OR dating OR insurance OR debt OR sex OR pharmacy OR poker OR “make money online” OR credit OR hacked
This is how you search your website for typical spam words (you can add more words to the command if you want).
To avoid having to do everything by hand on a regular basis, I recommend that you create a Google Alert.
Note : The search command can also be used to find spam comments that you may have accidentally shared at some point.
9. Look for internal link options.
Internal links help visitors navigate your website and are an important component of SEO. However, once your website has grown to a certain point, linkable content becomes increasingly difficult to find.
Good thing Google search operators can help with this too! Enter the following search command in Google before publishing a new article:
site: deinedomain.de intext: keyword (or, alternatively, site: deinedomain.de keyword , offers almost as good results). Therefore, only pages from yourdomain.de that contain the given keyword in the text are displayed.
Also Read: How to do LinkBuilding for SEO
7. Promotion and building links (10 – 18)
In this section, I’ll show you 9 tips that can help you build links or find PR opportunities.
10. Look for websites that accept guest posts.
Guest posts are still a great source of backlinks and can also help position you as an expert in a niche or promote your blog.
The problem is this:
Not all websites accept guest posts. This means that if you write to webmasters , if you’re lucky, there’s a good chance they will refuse or not respond at all. However, you can use a search operator to only show websites in the SERPs that already have online guest posts on your website, significantly increasing the likelihood of a positive response.
We assume that guest posts are also marked as such. This usually happens in the first sentence of the article, in which the author and his website are brief: This is a guest post by… who runs the website…
Therefore, you can use your theme intext:guest post.
Alternatively, the following searches are also possible:
• your theme inurl: guest contribution
• deinthema inurl: gastauthor or deinthema inurl: gastauthor (to find profile pages of guest authors).
• deinthema inurl: gastauthor or deinthema inurl: gastauthor (to find guest author profile pages).
• your theme intext: guest author or your theme intext: guest author
• your theme intitle: guest contribution
11. Find your own mentions
You can also use search operators to find out if you, the website or your brand have been mentioned anywhere. Simply use: yourbrandname -site: yourdomain.de and only search results from the last month will appear.
You can also make other exclusions, for example Pinterest. If your brand name is in a foreign language, it may also make sense to only show pages in Spanish. Periodically reviewing your mentions can help:
1. Find people who like your brand and content and you can network with them.
2. You can write to people who mention your brand but don’t link to your website and ask them to add a link (possibly the easiest link building method out there).
12. Find mentions of your competitors.
Not only can it be useful to find mentions of your own, but also those of your competitors. Because wherever your competitors are mentioned, there’s always a chance they’ll mention you instead. The search command is quite extensive, but I’ll explain how all the search parameters interact:
(intext: ”konkurrent1 ′ ′ OR “konkurrent2”) -site: konkurrent1.de – site: konkurrent2.de
Here’s the explanation:
• The intext: The search looks for websites that mention your competitor 1 or your competitor 2 in the text.
• With the OR operator , you deal with two competitors in a single search, which saves time (if you wish, you can also add a third or fourth)
• With site: excludes competing websites. Otherwise, Google would present you with many results coming from their websites.
Really simple, right?
13. Look for comment options
Blog comments are a great way to get in touch with other influencers or bloggers in your niche. If you want to search for blog posts related to topics that will allow you to leave comments, I recommend using your topic’s “save comment” search command .
This way, you will only identify those pages that have a button with the text “Save comment”. I recommend you try other variations because the button labeling is not the same everywhere:
• Send / leave comment.
• Submit / submit / post comment.
• Leave/write a comment.
• Save my name, website, and email in this browser for the next time I comment.
14. Find cooperation partners
If you are a blogger, networking and collaborating with other bloggers in your niche is essential. Whether to exchange knowledge, to recommend each other or to start a joint venture. To find other blogs in your niche, simply type the following into Google : yourtopic inurl: blog
So you get, for example, a long list of cooperation blogs in a very short time.
15. Find summary posts
A simple way to make your blog more known is through so-called “summary posts.” That means a post in which a blogger introduces other bloggers or has collected expert opinions on a certain topic. It is possible to make these publications using a search command according to the scheme intitle: deinthema blogs inurl: deinthema- blogs.
Or alternatively intitle: bloggertyp inurl: bloggertyp:
16. Find infographics.
Infographics may not be as “modern” as they were a few years ago. It’s worth creating your own infographics and then contacting bloggers or online magazines and asking if they want to feature them with you, this will help with link building.
This greatly increases your chances of a positive response:
To contact only bloggers or online magazines that already have infographics on their website. Because they are more likely to have an “open ear” for your request. And you can find out with the following search command: Your theme intitle: infographic inurl: infographic
Example : It is very difficult to make an SEO infographic and contact t3n or OnlineMarketing.de to distribute it:
Tip : To further increase your chances of success, you can also work with a date filter and only show search results from the last 6 to 12 months.
17. Search for link collections.
Link collections like this one in GDPR are great for link building:
If you have an excellent and thematically appropriate article on the topic of GDPR, simply ask the website operator if they will include your link.
Easy.
You can find collections of links with the following search commands:
• Deinthema intitle: “useful links”
• Your topic intitle: collection of links
• The topic title: resources (does not work as well, because Anglicism is not as widespread).
18. Check a domain’s backlinks.
To find out which websites you or one of your competitors have linked to, you don’t always have to use a backlink checker. Even if link : operator has been officially discontinued, it still offers some results:
For best results, you should exclude the social networks and the domain to be examined from the search, like this:
link: domain.de -site: domain.de -pinterest -facebook -twitter – linkedin -xing
Since the domain name often appears in the anchor text, you will also find many backlinks with the following search parameters:
“Domain.de” -site: domain.de -pinterest -facebook -twitter – linkedin -xing
Also Read: What is the purpose of a “focus keyphrase”
8. Other tricks (19 – 24)
The benefits of search operators go far beyond link building and public relations. Below, I have put together a few more tricks that can help you in your online business or Internet search:
19. Find cooperation partners for sponsored posts.
I can tell you from my own experience: It is easier to win a company as a cooperation partner for a sponsored post if the company has already worked with bloggers in the past. And to find these companies, Google search operators can help you!
I found that the easiest way to find sponsored posts is through WordPress categories and tags. Because many bloggers create their own.
Categories and/or tags for sponsored posts:
• Your topic inurl: category / sponsored
• Your topic inurl: tag / sponsored
• Your topic inurl: category / advertising
• Your topic inurl: tag / advertising
• Your topic inurl: category / cooperations
Alternatively, you can search for the brand, product, or product category name:
• Blog Brand Name (inurl: sponsored | inurl: advertising | inurl: advertising)
• Blog Product Category (inurl: sponsored | inurl: advertising | inurl: advertising)
• Blog Product Name (inurl: sponsored | inurl: advertising | inurl: advertising)
Briefly, to explain how the search command works: Google displays results related to “blog” and contain the product category (or product or brand name) and the word sponsored, advertising or display in the URL.
20. Find subdomains.
Do you want to know what subdomains there are for a domain and what content you can find there?
Then you can use this search operator: site : *. Domain.de – inurl: www (or optionally site: *.domain.de -https://domain.de)
21. Find profiles on social networks.
Do you want to target a blogger or influencer in your niche (for example, for the purpose of a collaboration)?
So it’s often easier to do it through social media. For example, you can find the social media profiles of a specific person by entering the following combination:
Name (site: facebook.com | site: twitter.com | site: linkedin.com | site: instagram.com | site: xing.com)
22. Look for question and answer portals.
Question and answer portals like Quora or gutefrage.net are a popular method to build your first backlinks quickly and efficiently. But they can also be very useful to get an idea of your own target group, problems and goals.
The problem:
Quora and gutefrage.net are huge websites with hundreds of miles of subpages. It can be difficult to find specific topics. Especially since its internal search functions are not particularly good. To get results faster, you can use the following combination of operators in Google:
site: gutefrage.net intitle: “your topic”
Then you can for example show search results from gutefrage.net that deals with the topic of Star Wars:
If you intend to comment on threads and, if necessary, include a link to your website, it is advisable to set the search results via the search filter to Last month or, better yet, Last week.
It always seems a little suspicious when someone comments on a thread that’s several months or years old. If you don’t get good results, you can also experiment with the following search commands:
• Site: gutefrage.net inurl: your-theme
• Site: gutefrage.net your theme
• Site: gutefrage.net “your theme”
23. Search forum threads on a topic.
Forums are very suitable for getting to know your target group better. Because they represent your challenges, problems, but also expectations and desires on a specific topic. To immediately find the appropriate forum threads, you can use the following combination of operators: deinthema inurl: forum
With more general search terms, it may happen that not individual forum threads appear, but rather home pages or categories. To avoid this, you can include URL components that are typical of forum threads: deinthema inurl: forum AND (inurl: topic | inurl: view | inurl: thread)
24. Limit search results to a certain TLD.
If you are looking for promotion or link building opportunities, or if you want to refine your Internet research, you can also restrict your search to a certain TLD (top-level domains, i.e. .de, .fr or .org). To do this, enter your theme site: .tld.
So you can for example; restrict universities and educational organizations.
Or on Google’s own blogs and websites.
9. Frequently asked questions.
Below you will find answers to common questions about Google search operators:
9.1 What other advanced search options does Google offer?
First, there’s advanced search on Google, which you can find in the Settings menu above the search results.
Secondly, there are the search filters that you can use to search for results, for example; you can limit the time.
Third, there is also the option to change the URL of a Google search directly.
By adding &psw=0 to a Google search, you can, for example; disable personalized search results.
You can find an overview of such URL modifiers on MOZ.
9.2 Do Google search operators also work for image searches?
Unfortunately, most of the selected search operators do not work for image search. However, you can use imagesize: widthxheight to display only images of a certain format.
9.3 Are there search operators for Bing?
Yes there is, you can find an overview of the different Bing search operators.
