If you’re an SEO professional, a hacker, a student or just a person that’s short on time (aren’t we all?) then you need to hone your google-fu by using search operaters.
Think of Google as a gateway to almost all information on the internet. You type in a query and get your answer in an instant. Boom! It’s magic really.
Google has done an amazing job indexing the web and tailoring its algorithm to deliver the most relevant search results. When returning your results google takes some things into account — the popularity of a search result, your location and your search history to name a few.
Most of the time this adds convenience and makes your search results more relevant for you. But sometimes this can skew the results or provide you with the wrong information. For instance, if you want to look up Nike, the greek goddess of victory, and you type “Nike” into the search bar you will get pages and pages of results for Nike the athletic brand because those web pages are popular. You would have to modify your search terms to include “mythology” in order to get results that you are looking for. Choosing the correct keywords or adding additional keywords is a basic way to refine your search results. But that is just the beginning, young grasshopper.
The internet is mind-bogglingly massive and finding obscure information can be difficult if you limit yourself to searching only by keywords. If you’re looking for niche information then you need to be using search operators. Search operators are like cheat codes that refine searches by filtering out unnecessary results.
Basic Search Operators
Basic Google search operators are special characters that can be added to your search term to narrow down your results logically. These allow you to specify more than one criteria and indicate the relationship between them. These are also called Boolean operators and are used in programming and algebra to deduce whether a value is true or false; in our case it helps google to decide whether to show us a result or not.
| Operator | Function | Example |
|---|---|---|
| “Keyword” | Place quotes around a keyword if you want to return results that contain an exact match | “Drake” |
| OR or | | Place OR between two keywords. Will return results for one or the other but not both. | lemons OR limes |
| AND | Place AND between two keywords. Will return results that pertain to both keywords. | apples AND bananas |
| – | Exclude a term or phrase. | dog breeds – pitbulls |
| () | Use parenthesese to group commands | (dog OR cat) adoption |
| ~ | Place before a keyword to also retun results that are similar or synonyms | ~cat |
| * | The wildcard! Will give you results for any term or phrase that you include | dog*chihuahua |
| in | Put “in” between two units of measure that you want to convert | 2Kg in lbs |
| $ | Search for prices | apartment $1500 |
| .. | Place between two numbers to return results that fall within that range. | 1..9 |
| @ | Search for a username | @alekzandriia |
| # | Search for a hashtag | #summer |
Advanced Search Operators
Advanced search operators (or search commands) allow you to specify a field:value pair where the value (or keyword) will only be returned if it falls within the parameters specified by the field (usually something like a specific file type or web domain).
| Operator | Function | Example |
|---|---|---|
| site: | Only search within a specific website | site:bbc.com |
| filetype: | Only return results with a specific file type | filetype:PDF |
| define: | Search for the definition of a word | define:serendipity |
| intitle: | Find a page that has a specific keyword or phrase in the title (the title is the text that appears on the page’s tab in the browser) | intitle: banana sundae |
| inurl: | Find a URL with a specific word or phrase | inurl:chocolate |
| intext: | Find a page that has a specific word or phrase in the body/ content section of the page | intext:salt |
| related: | Place before a website. Search for websites with similar content | related:wordpress.com |
| cache: | Place before a website. Find the most recent cache of an indexed web page | cache:apple.com |
| weather: | Show a card with the current weather of that location | weather:Chicago |
| stocks: | Show a card with the the current market summary | Stocks:Apple |
| map: | Show a Google map of a location | map:Toronto |
| movie: | Show a card with info about a movie, including showtimes if it’s currently playing | move:Batman |
| source: | Use in Google news, returns results from the specified source | source:CNN.com |
| loc: | Returns results for web pages that are linked to a speciic location | loc:Orlando |
| AROUND(X) | Search for terms within a certin number of words from each other | chocolate AROUND(4) pudding |
Some other things to keep in Mind
- The order of your keywords matters.
- Capitalization and punctuation do not matter unless you are using one of the Boolean search commands.
- These tricks can be used on any search engine. Give them a try on Bing, Yahoo, or Duck Duck Go.
Google for Hacking (Google Dorks)
If you’re so inclined to look for it, advanced search operators can also give you access to hidden information. Hackers often use google as their first step when gathering information about their targets. Using advanced search operators hackers can find personal information about people that may have been inadvertently exposed like email addresses, usernames, birthdates, workplaces etc. When hackers use google in this way it’s often called Google Hacking or Google Dorking.
Information that we might think is public knowledge and therefore unimportant can actually be used against us to hack into our accounts or attack us in some other nefarious way. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and I’ll be doing a post on privacy very soon — with cybercrime on the rise it’s becoming more and more important to protect ourselves from those bad actors. Stay tuned!
Download the Google-Fu Cheatsheet