We all love Google. It’s a great place to search and find answers. However, unless you’re a technology geek you probably still use Google in its simplest form. In addition to showing top notch search results, Google’s algorithm has some interesting features. There are many more useful, clever, and lesser-known search recipes and operators that work from that unassuming little input box.
Basic Usage:
Use quotation marks ” “ to locate an entire string.
eg. “PEAK Internet” will only return results with that exact string.
Mark essential words with a +
If a search term must contain certain words or phrases, mark it with a + symbol. eg: +”bill gates” conference will return all results containing “bill gates” but not necessarily those pertaining to a conference.
Negate unwanted words with a -
You may wish to search for the term bass, pertaining to the fish and be returned a list of music links as well. To narrow down your search a bit more, try: bass -music. This will return all results with “bass” and NOT “music”.
General Tips:
site:www.peak.org
This will search only pages which reside on this domain.
related:www.peak.org
This will display all pages which Google finds to be related to your URL
spell:word
Runs a spell check on your word
define:word
Returns the definition of the word
stocks: [symbol, symbol, etc]
Returns stock information . eg. stock: goog
maps:
A shortcut to Google Maps
phone: name_here
Attempts to lookup the phone number for a given name
cache:
If you include other words in the query, Google will highlight those words within the cached document. For instance, cache:www.peak.org web will show the cached content with the word “web” highlighted.
info:
The query [info:] will present some information that Google has about that web page. For instance, info:www.peak.org will show information about the PEAK Internet homepage. Note there can be no space between the “info:” and the web page url.
weather:
Used to find the weather in a particular city. eg. weather: portland
Advanced Tips:
filetype:
Does a search for a specific file type, or, if you put a minus sign (-) in front of it, it won’t list any results with that filetype. Try it with .mp3, .mpg or .avi if you like.
daterange:
Is supported in Julian date format only. 2452384 is an example of a Julian date.
allinurl:
If you start a query with [allinurl:], Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the url. For instance, [allinurl: google search] will return only documents that have both “google” and “search” in the url.
inurl:
If you include [inurl:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the url. For instance, [inurl:google search] will return documents that mention the word “google” in their url, and mention the word “search” anywhere in the document (url or no). Note there can be no space between the “inurl:” and the following word.
allintitle:
If you start a query with [allintitle:], Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the title. For instance, [allintitle: google search] will return only documents that have both “google” and “search” in the title.
intitle:
If you include [intitle:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the title. For instance, [intitle:google search] will return documents that mention the word “google” in their title, and mention the word “search” anywhere in the document (title or no). Note there can be no space between the “intitle:” and the following word.
allinlinks:
Searches only within links, not text or title.
allintext:
Searches only within text of pages, but not in the links or page title.
bphonebook:
If you start your query with bphonebook:, Google shows U.S. business white page listings for the query terms you specify. For example, [ bphonebook: google portland ] will show the phonebook listing for Google in Portland.
phonebook:
If you start your query with phonebook:, Google shows all U.S. white page listings for the query terms you specify. For example, [ phonebook: Krispy Kreme Portland ] will show the phonebook listing of Krispy Kreme donut shops in Portland.
rphonebook:
If you start your query with rphonebook:, Google shows U.S. residential white page listings for the query terms you specify. For example, [ rphonebook: John Doe Oregon ] will show the phonebook listings for John Doe in Oregon (city or state). Abbreviations like [ rphonebook: John Doe OR ] generally also work.
After reading this article, you might be thinking “well, I could probably find those results without remembering these advanced search terms”. Well, the truth is that you probably could. The reason you want to start to use these advanced search tips is because they will help you find what you’re looking for faster. They greatly help narrow down the results, and more often than not, the information you were looking for will be in the first two or three results.
Information found through: CyberWyre / Googlism
