Upcoming Classes

Class Schedule Reference: Advanced Operators for Web

Calendar Search
Goodies

Web Search Master Lessons Updated: October 21, 2011

What Kinds of Lessons Do We Offer?
Master Lessons Here, in one place, are all of the currently documented
Basic Lesson Plans advanced search operators for web search. Note that Scholar,
Lessons for Your Country Groups, etc. may have some unique operators listed
Webinar Archives elsewhere. Also note that some operators come in pairs
Reference: Advanced Operators for Web (e.g., allinanchor along with inanchor: ). We’ve written about
Search
them together rather than having two entries for the same kind
AGoogleADay
of operator. Also, we followed the square brackets convention
Have More Questions? where a query is surrounded by square brackets. When doing
Find answers in Google's Help Center! the query, you wouldn’t actually use the square brackets in
your query. (Although it won’t hurt anything either...)
____________________________________________________

allinanchor: / inanchor:

Google restricts results to pages containing all query

terms in the anchor text on links to the page. For
instance: [ allinanchor: best restaurant Sunnyvale ] will
return only pages in which the anchor text on links to the
pages contain the words “best” “restaurant” and
“Sunnyvale” – that is, all of the words following
the allinanchor operator. So, when using allinanchor:
in your query, do not include any other search operators.
By contrast, using the operator inanchor: only searches
for the term that’s next. Example: [ inanchor:sales offer
2011 ] will search only for “sales” in the anchor text.

Anchor text is the text on a page that is linked to another

web page or a different place on the current page. When
you click on anchor text, you will be taken to the page or
place on the page to which it is linked.

allintext: / intext:

Restricts results to those containing all the query terms

you specify in the text of the page. For example,
[ allintext: camping tent stove] will return only pages in
which the words “camping” “tent” and “stove” appear in
the text of the page. Using the operator intext: will
search only for the next term in the text of the page. .
(Note: using intext: in front of every word in your query
is the same as using allintext: at the front of your query,
e.g., [ intext:Victorian intext:artists ] is the same as [
allintext: Victorian artists ].)

allintitle: / intitle:

Restricts results to those containing all the query terms

you specify in the title. For example, [ allintitle: university
relations ] will return only documents that contain the
words “university” and “relations” in the title of the page.
Using the operator intitle: will search only for the next
term in the title of the page. For instance, [ flu
shot intitle:help ] will return documents that mention the
 word “help” in their titles, and mention the words “flu” and
“shot” anywhere in the document (title or not).
allinurl: / inurl:

Restricts results to those containing all the query terms

you specify in the URL. For example, [ allinurl: google
faq ] will return only documents that contain the words
“google” and “faq” in the URL, such as
“www.google.com/help/faq.html”.
term1 AROUND( n ) term2

Limits results to those documents where term1 appears

within a certain number of words of term2. For instance, [
search AROUND (3) engine ] will find only documents
that have the words “search” within 3 words of “engine” –
this is particularly useful when searching for common
words that are relevant to your search only when in close
proximity.

define:

Gives definitions from pages on the web for the term that
follows. Useful for finding definitions of words, phrases,
and acronyms. For example, [ define: peruse ] will give a
definition of the word “peruse.” This also works for many
phrases, [ define:Hobson’s choice ]
filetype:suffix

Limits results to pages whose names end in suffix. The

suffix is anything following the last period in the file name
of the web page and can be many characters in length.

Example: [ search engine guidelines filetype:pdf ] will

return Adobe Acrobat pdf files that match the terms
“search,” “engine,” “guildelines,” and are pages whose
names end with pdf
Fill in the blanks (*)

The *, or wildcard, is a little-known feature that can be

very powerful. If you include * within a query, it tells
Google to try to treat the star as a placeholder for any
unknown term(s) and then find the best matches. For
example, the search [ Google * ] will give you results
about many of Google's products (go to next page and
next page -- we have many products). The query [
Obama voted * on the * bill ] will give you stories about
different votes on different bills. Note that the * operator
works only on whole words, not parts of words.
inanchor: (see allinanchor: above )

info:

info: will gives some additional information about the

specified web page. For instance, the query --
[ info:googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/introducing-
google-project-real-life.html ]

will show information about this Google web blog page,

including a cached version, links to pages that link to this page,
other pages
on this site, etc.

intext: (see allintext: above)

intitle: ( see allintitle: above)

inurl: (see allinurl: above)

link:

link:URL shows pages that point to that URL. For

example, to find pages that point to Google’s
3DWarehouse home page you would search for
[ link: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/ ]

Note that the link: operator does not return a complete

list of all the links available. It simply returns a
representative sample.

Minus sign ( – ) to exclude

Placing a minus sign immediately before a word

indicates that you do not want pages that contain this
word to appear in your results. The minus sign should
appear immediately before the word and should be
preceded with a space. For example, in the query [ anti-
virus software ], the minus sign is used as a hyphen and
will not be interpreted as an exclusion symbol; whereas
the query: [ anti-virus –software ] will search for the
words 'anti-virus' but exclude references to software. You
can exclude as many words as you want by using the –
sign in front of all of them, for example [ jaguar –cars –
football –os ]. The – sign can be used to exclude more
than just words. For example, place a minus sign before
the 'site:' operator (without a space) to exclude a specific
site from your search results. (NOTE: If you copy and
paste these searches into a search bar, please note that
we have elongated the minus sign here so you can see it-
-please replace with a regular minus sign.)
Number range ( .. )

The number range operator searches for results

containing numbers in a given range. Just add two
numbers, separated by two periods, with no spaces, into
the search box along with your search terms. Example: [
Willie Mays 1950..1960 ] You can also specify a unit of
measurement or some other indicator of what the number
range represents. For example, here's how you'd search
for a DVD player that costs between $50 and $100: [
DVD player $50..$100 ]

OR

The Boolean operator OR specifies alternatives to use as

synonyms in search. For instance, the query:

[ mesothelioma OR “lung disease” treatment ]

could be used to search for a treatment for either

mesothelioma or the quoted phrase “lung disease” (Be sure to
make the OR all
uppercase. Lowercase or won’t work.)

Phrase search (using double quotes, “…” )

By putting double quotes around a set of words, you are

telling Google to consider the exact words in that exact
order without any change. Google already uses the order
and the fact that the words are together as a very strong
signal and will stray from it only for a good reason, so
quotes are usually unnecessary. By insisting on phrase
 search you might be missing good results accidentally.
For example, a search for [ "Alexander Bell" ] (with
quotes) will miss any pages that refer to Alexander G.
Bell.
related:

A search for related:URL lists pages that are similar to

the web page you specify. For instance,
[related:en.wikipedia.org] will list web pages that are
similar to the Wikipedia homepage.
Search exactly as is ("word")

Google employs synonyms automatically, so that it finds

pages that mention, for example, childcare for the query [
child care ] (with a space), or California history for the
query [ ca history ]. But sometimes Google helps out a
little too much and gives you a synonym when you don't
really want it. By enclosing the single word you want to
freeze in quotes as in the query [ "ca" history ], you are
telling Google to match that word precisely as you typed
it.
site:

Using the site: operator restricts your search results to

the site or domain you specify. For example, [ penquins
site:.aq ] will search for pages about penguins from web
sites that have an AQ top-level domain name. (AQ is
Antarctica, and is mostly research stations located there.)
A query like [ accidents site:bls.gov ] will find pages
about accidents within the bls.gov domain (BLS = Bureau
of Labor Statistics). You can specify a domain with or
without a period, e.g., either as .gov or gov.
Combinations of operators:

Many of the search operators –, OR, and " " can be

combined. For example, to find articles on security from
all sites except Wikipedia.org you would search for:

[ article security –site:Wikipedia.org ]

Similarly, you might want to exclude some kinds of

documents with a search such as [ salsa recipe -
tomatoes -filetype:pdf ] which would find salsa recipes
that do not include the term “tomatoes” and are not PDF
files.

More advanced search options:

Note that the Advanced Search page

(http://www.google.com/advanced_search) also provides
a set of search options that are not available as special
operators. Using the Advanced Search page you can
also:
- filter by language (e.g., find pages only in
Spanish, Chinese, German, etc.)
- date (filter by time)
- usage rights (filter by Creative Commons license)
- reading level (find pages that are Basic,
Intermediate or Advanced reading levels)

Comments
 You do not have permission to add comments.

Google Search Education Webinars by Google Search Education is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at sites.google.com/site/gwebsearcheducation.

Sign in | Recent Site Activity | Report Abuse | Print Page | Powered By Google Sites