Useful Search Engine Tips and Tricks

There are many ways you can manipulate web searches for better control over search results. You can also use search engines to retrieve specific information and statistics (such as finding all web pages which link to a specific domain or web page) for websites, by using specific prefixes. This post covers some basic search techniques which can be used to increase the relevance of search results, and how to use search engines (mainly google) to discover web site statistics.

Retrieving Relevant Search Results

Bing, Google, and Yahoo allow the use of the following operators and terms to help retrieve relevant search results.

Search exactly as is (+)

By placing a plus sign immediately before a word, emphasises finding that particular term as you have typed is a priority. web +l33t — will return all web pages which include the term l33t, instead of usually trying to correct you.

Terms you want to exclude (-)

Placing a minus sign immediately before a word, excludes web pages which contain that word from the search results. web -spider — will return pages which contain the word web, but not the word spider.

Exact phrase (“TERM”)

Placing double quotes around a set of words, will return web pages which contain that exact phrase. “spider web” — will return web pages which contain the exact phase spider web. Stop words (the, a, and etc.) are usually ignored, but when contain within double quotes they are not.

Fill in the blanks (*)

An asterisk acts as a wild card. “cat * dog” will return web pages containing a phrase which start with cat, has any term in the middle, and finishes with dog. The * operator works only on whole words, not parts of words.

The OR operator

By placing OR (must be in caps) between two terms will return web pages which include at least one of the two terms. “the jerk” 1979 OR 1980 — will retrieve web pages which includes the exact phrase the jerk and 1979, web pages which includes the exact phrase the jerk and 1980

Search within a specific website (site:URL)

Using the prefix site: followed by a website’s web address, then search terms, will return results from that specific web site containing the search terms. site:webdevsuite.com tool will return search results for web pages from the website webdevsuite.com, containing the term tool.

filetype:doc

Using the prefix filetype: within a search returns files of that type. css cheat sheet filetype:pdf — will return search results for pdf files containing the terms css, cheat, and sheet.

Useful Search Engine Techniques for Webmasters

The following prefixes can be used to discover useful statistics and infomation about websites and web pages.

site:URL

Yes I know, I covered this above. I just wanted to mention, it is also useful for discovering which pages of specific domains a search engines has indexed in it’s database. site:webdesignerdave.com — will return all the pages a search engine has index for webdesignerdave.com.

link:URL

Will return all pages indexed that link to that url. (Google and Yahoo only)

related:URL

Will return websites that Google considers related. (Google only)

allinurl:

Will return web pages with all the terms following the prefix, in the web page’s url. (Google only)

inurl:

Similar to allinurl: except only the first term after the prefix is relavent to the url. All other terms will be seached within the web pages. inurl:web spider — will return web pages containing the word spider in the web page, and also has the word web in it’s URL. (Google only)

allintitle:

Will return web pages with the terms following the prefix, in the web page’s title. (Google only)

intitle:

Similar to allintitle: except only the first term after the prefix is relavent to the web pages title. All other terms will be seached within the web pages. intitle:web spider — will return web pages containing the word spider in the web page, and also has the word web in it’s title. (Google only)

allinlinks:

Searches only within links, not a web page’s text or title. (Google only)

allintext:

Searches only within text of pages, but not a web page’s links or page title. (Google only)