Well, let me start by saying, that you shouldn’t take the title the wrong way. Not knowing search operators doesn't make you stupid, but they can however help you work smarter.
When I started out in Internet Marketing, way back in the 90’s, searching was anything but easy. First of all, the amount of information out there was only a fraction of the current volumes, and what was worse - the search engines really sucked when it came to indexing information. Doing research was an exhausting task: getting spam results was rather the rule than the exception, and you mostly had to "fall back" on the directory/information sites created by more benevolent people. Now, almost 20 years later, we have come a long way and search engines are becoming increasingly intelligent. Nevertheless, there are indeed occasions where they can't yet read our minds, and where we have to take the help of advanced search operators to find what we are really looking for. Below I will give a primer, sufficient for most, to get your feet wet.
First, we have a small quiz though. I am looking for two persons and my Google queries are:
Las Vegas Piano Player
70’s Aerobics Instructor
Do you know which persons am I looking for and does Google know as well? We'll see later.
Why do we need Search Operators?
While Search Operators are critical to the work done by SEO specialists, we are mainly concerned with using these operators for the most important reason we use search engines for – searching for information. Search operators allow us to use search engines (whether it’s Google, Bing or Yahoo) more effectively and to perform far better, advanced and highly targeted searches.
Let’s discuss some of the most important Search Operators you should know about.
Boolean Operators
An operator is an object that can manipulate a value. For instance, in "1 + 2" the "1" and "2" are the operands and the plus symbol is the operator. Boolean Operators are operators such as AND, OR and NOT, which are used in conjunction with keywords to refine a keyword search.
AND: narrows the search by searching for all of the records containing the first keyword, then for all the records containing the second keyword, and displaying only those records that contain both.
OR: includes records containing either keyword, or both.
NOT: On combining search terms with the NOT operator, it narrows the search by excluding unwanted terms.
Operator Overview
Operators used in fine-tuning a Google Search Query
Quoted Phrases
Searches for a phrase, a proper name or a set of words that are put in double quotes in a particular order. Here, “Laptop Service” gets pages having the exact phrase “Laptop Service”, while searching for the same phrase without the double quotes, Laptop Service, may get results when the two words in the phrase do not appear together.
Google eliminated the + operator a few years ago and extended the capabilities of the quotation marks operator. Now, you can not only use the quotation marks operator to search for an exact phrase, you may as well add quotation marks around a single word, which makes Google match that word exactly.
The – Operator
Here, you may precede a term you do not want to appear in any result with a “–” sign. So, on using Honda -motorcycles, you get results for all pages which include “Honda” but not “motorcycles”.
The OR Operator
Here, on using an uppercase OR or | (a so called pipeline) with two words, you get results that have both the words, or at least one of them. For example, Microsoft | Apple gets you search results that have either Microsoft or Apple, or both, but not those that have neither.
The .. Operator
Gets results containing numbers in a range, by specifying two numbers that are separated by two periods and with no spaces. If you’re looking for a price range for a Toyota car between $50,000 and $100,000, do this:
Toyota Car $50,000..$100,000
The * Operator
Here we use *, an asterisk character, known as a wildcard, to match one or more words in a phrase that is enclosed in quotes. * may be considered to be a placeholder. For example, iPhone * London, gets you results in several combinations, such as iPhone sale in London, iPhone repair in London and so on.
Search Engine Operators
While Google has a dozen of advanced search operators and we show the two most important ones.
site: <url>
Example: site:thedomain.com or site:thedomain.com “search term”
The site: operator is the most basic, but also very useful. When this operator is used with the URL of a website, it returns all pages indexed by Google with that particular URL. It is also used to search for specific keywords within a particular site. This results in all the pages containing those keywords that Google has indexed from that site. These pages are also sorted according to the relevance of each page for that particular query.
link:<url>
Example: link:thedomain.com or link:thedomain.com/page1
Eons ago, in the earliest days of Interwebs and about the same time as when Gandalf and I attended high school, using the link operator would get the results of all pages that had links to the given URL. Google no longer provides this, but only allows for a sample or a snapshot of the sites that have the links to the URL be represented.
Other Search Operators
inanchor:
This operator identifies pages on which the anchor text includes a certain word.
Example: inanchor:laptop
This would return all the pages where the anchor text contains the words ‘laptop’.
intext:
This operator identifies pages where the text contains the specified word.
Example: intext:car
This returns all the web documents with the word ‘car’ in the text.
intitle:
This operator identifies all web pages where the title tag holds a specified word.
Example: intitle:laptop
This returns all web pages where the title tag has the word ‘laptop.’
inurl:
This operator identifies all web pages where the URL holds a specific word.
Example: inurl:laptop
This returns all web pages where the URL has the word ‘laptop’.
related:
This operator lists all sites that are similar to the site being specified.
Example: related:seomonitor.com
This would return similar websites like wordtracker.com, moz.com or even my own blog. The related: operator is really useful when looking for link building opportunities.
The ALLIN Operators
I consider the allin operators unreliable and very seldom (try to) use them. Read this section only if you really wish to learn about them, or otherwise skip to the next.
allintext:
This operator identifies all pages where the text contains the specified words.
Example: allintext:laptop repair service
This would return all web documents where the text has these words – laptop, repair and service.
allintitle:
This operator identifies all pages in which the title tag has all the word specified.
Example: allintitle:laptop service houston
This returns all the web pages where the title tag has the words ‘laptop’ , ‘service’ and 'houston'.
allinurl:
This operator identifies all web documents in which the URL has all the specified words.
Example: allinurl:laptop service
This returns all the web pages where the URL holds the words ‘laptop’ and ‘service’.
allinanchor:
This operator identifies web documents in which the anchor text has all the words that follow the colon.
Example: allinanchor: laptop repair
This would return all web documents where the anchor text holds of the words ‘laptop’ and ‘repair’.
Using and Chaining the site: Search Operator
Here are the different ways of using the site: operator.
site:sub.domain.com
Finds indexed pages on a specific subdomain.
Example: site:motors.ebay.com
Adding a wildcard, *.domain.com, would show pages on all subdomains.
site:domain.com inurl:keyword
Returns a list of pages on a specific domain which have the "keyword" in the URL.
Example: site:lifehacker.com inurl:blog
site:domain.com -inurl:keyword1 -inurl:keyword2 -inurl:keyword3
Several operators are chained in this query. This means, that the following example would show all pages from lifehacker.com, which do not have www, local or aws in the url.
Example: site:lifehacker.com -inurl:www -inurl:local -inurl:aws
A Demonstration of Chained Operators
Consider the following example:
"5..10 ways to" OR "5..10 tips" intitle:brand site:lifehacker.com intext:marketing inanchor:blog -inanchor:blogging -inurl:www
This translates into:
"5..10 ways to" OR "5..10 tips"
The page must contain these phrases and the values should range from 5 to 10.
site:lifehacker.com
Results are based on what’s on the lifehacker.com domain.
intitle:brand
The page must hold the word “brand” in the title tag.
intext:marketing
The page must hold the word “marketing”.
inanchor:blog
The page must hold a link anchor which contains the word “blog”.
-inanchor:blogging
The page may not hold a link which has the word “blogging”.
-inurl:www
The site URL may not hold the word “www”.
Learn More
You are close to the end of the article, but this is only the beginning of your education on search operators. Now, if you are curious and want to study further and become a true genius of search, head over to Dan Russell’s homepage. Dan is a Google employee and is nothing short of a Jedi Master when it comes to searching in Google. Dan has held many seminars on search and offers tons of free study material on his site.
Answers to The Quiz
So, according to Google - who were the people we were looking for?
Liberace and Richard Simmons! Two out of two! Yep! Google gets it right yet again, showing just how powerful it can be. Heck – it can read your mind! You think that’s too much power in the hands of one technology company? Well, that’s a topic for another day.