Guide to How to use Google Search Operators For SEO

Examples of Google Search Operators List

Exact Match

This search operator is used to get accurate web search results with titles, or descriptions, or URLs containing the exact word or phrase in the same order as given in the quotes. It excludes synonyms, missing words, misspelled words.

“search engine optimization”

OR

This operator is used when you want to get web results containing either the search term ‘A’ or ‘B’. 

You can also you pipe ( | ) operator instead of an OR.

search engine optimization | SEO
search engine optimization OR SEO

AND

Use the ‘AND’ operator to get the web search results containing both terms ‘A’ and ‘B’.

search engine optimization AND SEO

Hypen(-)

It is used to exclude a word or phrase from search results. In our examples, you will get the results related to jobs excluding the jobs from specified job portal Naukri

jobs ‑Naukri

* (wildcards)

As the name suggests, wildcards (*) are placeholders, which can be replaced by any word or phrase. This can be particularly useful if you’ve

a) forgotten parts of a word or phrase

b)when you want to search for variable endings of a root word

 educat*

Example: educat*, you will get results like educated, education, educational, educator. 

c) To do a multiple character wildcard search you can use the “*” symbol.

? (another wildcard operator)

a) To perform a single character wildcard search use the “?” symbol.

b) It is most useful when the word has more than one variable spellings(as in UK and US English), and you want to search for variants all at once. 

colo?r

Example: colo?r would return web results containing both color and colour.  

( ) -parentheses

a) Use parentheses () to group the search terms and operators and control the order in which the desired words need to be.

(Naukri OR indeed or monster) jobs 

(Naukri and indeed) and jobs

$

use this operator to find the search the products based on price. 

 It also works for Euro (€), but not GBP (£) 

Redmi ₹7000

define:

Use this operator to find the meaning, characteristics, definition for a word.

define:Wikipedia

cache:

To get the latest updated, stored version of a page in google (provided that the page is already indexed)

This is useful to find when the page was last crawled.

cache:webmarketersguide.com

filetype:

This operator is used to find the different kinds of files like PDF, PPT, DOCX, TXT.

You can also use the “ext:” operator.

SEO filetype:pdf

digital marketing ext:ppt

site: 

This operator is used to:

a) Find the Number of pages indexed of a particular site 

site:webmarketersguide.com

b) To find the specific pages of a website containing specific topic or word without the need to check the entire website

site:webmarketersguide.com SEO 

related:

To Find the related sites in the same niche.

related:facebook.com

intitle:

To get the web pages containing the specified word in the title section. In our example, only results that contain the word ‘search engine optimization in the title tag will be displayed.

intitle: search engine optimization

allintitle:

Similar to “intitle,” but only results containing all of the specified words in the title tag will be returned.

It is similar to the operator ‘intitle’  but it is used if want to get search results that contain all the specified words in the title. In our example only results that contain both the words, SEO and UX in the title are returned.

allintitle: SEO UX

inurl:

This operator is used to get the results that contain the targeted word in the URL. In our example, any result that contains the word ‘digital marketing’ in the URL are returned

 inurl: digital marketing

allinurl:

It is similar to the above operator “inurl”, but it returns results that contain all the targeted words in the URL. In our example, results that contain both the targeted words in the URL are returned.

allinurl: SEO digital marketing

intext:

It returns results containing the targeted word or phrase in the content. For the below example, it gives the results containing the specified “digital marketing vs traditional marketing” in the page content.  

intext:digital marketing vs traditional marketing

allintext:

It is similar to “intext” but returns results that contain all the targeted keywords in the main content.

allintext: SEO vs PPC

AROUND(X)

This operator is used to find the pages that contain the words or phrases which are X words apart from each other. In our example, webpages that contain words “SEO” and “UX” with no more than four words between SEO and UX are returned.

SEO AROUND(4) UX

weather:

To get the weather report for a specific location as of now. 

This is displayed in the form of weather snippets and it also displays results from other weather-related websites.

weather: Hyderabad

Stocks:

To know the information about stock price, news etc of a specific company.

stocks:aapl

map:

To get map results for a locational search.

map:hyderabad

movie:

To get information about a specific movie, reviews, votes etc. You can also find the showtimes if the movie is currently running in the nearest theatres near you.

movie:vakeel saab

in

To convert from one unit to another. It Works for Currency, Weights, Temperatures, lengths etc.

$329 in INR

source:

To get the news information from your favorite source in Google News.

covid19 source:timesofindia

_ (underscore)

To get the Google Autocomplete keyword suggestions. 

TCS datascience _ jobs

#..#

To get the information related to a topic between a certain period.

Search for a range of numbers. In the example below, searches related to “covid19 videos” are returned for the years 2019–2020, but not for 2021.

covid19 video 2019..2020

inanchor:

To get the webpages that are hyperlinked to a targeted anchor text.

In our example, any webpage with inbound links containing either “digital marketing” or “SEO” in the anchor text is displayed.

inanchor:digital marketing SEO

 

allinanchor:

It is same as “inanchor”, but returns results that contain all the targeted words in the inbound anchor text will be disp

Similar to “inanchor,” but returns only results containing all of the specified words in the inbound anchor text.

allinanchor:digital marketing strategy

 

blogurl:

To find the blog URLS of a specific domain. It is used in Google blog search, but it also gives results in regular search also.

blogurl:microsoft.com

Google Search Calculator

You can use google to do simple calculations.

20*25

Tip Calculator:

You can use google for simple tip calculation. just enter ‘tip calculator’ in the search. It will ask for the Total bill, tip percentage, number of people. Your tip is displayed.

tip calculator

Stopwatch 

 Google also has a stopwatch function. just enter ‘stopwatch’ in Google then a stopwatch tool is displayed with start and reset buttons.

stopwatch

Timer

Enter timer into Google for a stopwatch function. Google will display the results with timer functionality that has start and reset option.

5 minute timer

 

Sunrise and Sunset

You can use google to get sunrise and sunset times for a specific day and location just enter the term sunrise or sunset.

sunset hyderabad, telangana

Flight Status

This is very useful for frequent fliers. Enter the airline name or airline abbreviation along with the flight number. Google will return the needed information about the flight that includes estimated departure time, delay information and current status. 

Delta flight 104

Sports Scores, etc

Find the latest sores and news about your favourite team or sport. just type the name of your teams playing against each other and Google will display the information about scores, schedules, news.

 India vs Australia

 Nutrition Information

Just enter your favorite food item to know info about fat content, calories, nutrients, cholesterol, and more.

Grilled chicken salad Nutrition

Google image Search:

Go to https://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en

click on image, upload image, submit for search.

You will get all the information like title, description etc.

Google Image Search Operators

Google also has a set of image search operators that are helpful in finding the images with specific size from a specific domain.

Note: The above search operators work only on Google Image Search Property.

They are:

1.SRC:

This image search operator returns the pages that referenced the image URL mentioned in the search operator.

src: https://www.example.com/social-media-marketing.jpg

Advantages of SRC Image Search Operator:

This helps in finding the other domains that have hotlinked your website images.

2.IMAGESIZE:

This operators helps in finding the images with specific size mentioned in the search operator.

IMAGESIZE:800*400

This operator is useful when used inconjunction with other search operators like site and src.

To find the image of specific size from a given domain.

src:https://www.example.com/seo/marketing.jpg imagesize:500x1200

This returns all the images of a domain with the size specified.

site:https://www.example.com/ imagesize:500x1200

link:

To get the backlinks of a target domain. It was deprecated in early 2017.

link:webmarktersguide.com

Google Search hacks

Just search the below terms you will get amazing search results.

1. do a barrel roll
2. askew
3. flip a coin

Arcade Games

• Google Pacman
• Atari Breakout
• Zerg Rush

Search Operator Tips & Tricks

Knowing about each operator is not enough. You will come to know the real importance of search operators only when they are used combinedly for some purpose.

1.Chain together operator combos

You can chain together almost any combination of text searches, basic operators, and advanced operators:

You can create a chain with any number of combinations of basic searches, text searches, and advanced operators as shown in the example below.

For Example: 

"Bill Gates" intitle:"best 5..8 facts" -site:youtube.com inurl:2014

The above example search will return results that contain “Bill Gates” (exact-match), has the phrase “best (X) facts” in the title, where X ranges from 5 to 8, and the results are not from youtube.com and the results must have 2015 somewhere in the URL.

2. Hunt down plagiarized content

check whether your content is unique or if someone else is copying your content using the below combination of search operators.

intext:"importance of digital marketing in todays world" -site:webmarktersguide.com

3. Find content on specific TLDs

find any content about Bill Gates on a university website using TLD .edu with site: operator.

The “site:” operator won’t work on a partial domain. It only works on full root domains, full domains, or TLDs. It also works on country-specific TLDs (ccTLDs), such as “co.uk” or “com.sg”.

Bill Gates site:.edu

 4.  Find content on multiple TLDs

You can also get the targeted content from multiple TLDs

Bill gates (site:gov OR site:edu)

5.   Check multiple keywords in title

You can also check the multiple keywords in the title. 

intitle: Bill gates intitle:vs intitle: ratan tata

6. Check the uniqueness of my post title

To check the originality of my post title which contains “advance search operators” and uses variations of “in * simple steps” in the result.

intitle:"advance search operators" "in * simple steps"

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

What is Hotlinking?

Ans: Hotlinking is an act of linking the resources or files directly from other sites without their permission.  It is bad practice that negatively affects the original site owners that are hosting the resources.