Google Search Operators - The Complete List (44 Advanced Operators)
Google Search Operators - The Complete List (44 Advanced Operators)
COM/BLOG/CATEGORY/GENERAL-SEO/)
For example, the site: operator restricts results to those from a particular site:
In this post, you’ll learn all of Google’s search operators and how to master them
for SEO.
Contents
Search operators
Use cases
Working
Search What it
Example
operator does
SIDENOTE. You can also use the _ operator, which acts as a wildcard in Google
Autocomplete.
Unreliable
Search
What it does Example
operator
allinpostauthor: Same as inpostauthor: , but removes the need for quotes. alli
job
Search operator What it does Exa
inposttitle: Search for posts with certain words in the title in Google’s inp
discontinued Blog Search. iph
link: Search for pages linking to a particular domain or URL. Dropped link
in 2017 (https://searchengineland.com/google-officially-killed-
off-link-command-267454).
My aim here is to show that you can achieve almost anything with Google
advanced operators if you know how to use and combine them. So don’t be afraid
to play around and deviate from the examples below. You may just discover
something new.
Prefer video?
Check out nine actionable Google search operator tips in Sam Oh’s video
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWLD9139Ipc).
For example, if we combine it with the filetype: operator, we see that this 3D
printing company has quite a few PDFs indexed:
This isn’t a bad thing if it’s intentional, but I have a feeling it isn’t for some
of these.
For instance, its site has a lead-generation landing page for a white paper about
the total cost of ownership for 3D printers:
But this PDF is indexed, so you can easily access it without filling in your details:
For example, if we search for site:moz.com , we can quickly see that it has
published a lot of content on its blog, help section, and “SEO Learning Center.”
If we adjust our site: operator to focus on its Learning Center, we can start to
get a sense of the type of content published and what it’s about.
In this case, it looks like there are lots of definition-type posts.
However, what Google can’t tell us is whether these pages get any organic traffic.
To find that out, we’ll need to use a third-party tool.
If you’re not an Ahrefs user, you can use our free traffic checker
(https://ahrefs.com/traffic-checker) to check pages one by one:
Here’s its organic traffic growth over the last few months:
For example, if you have a website about coffee, you can search for something
like coffee intitle:"write for us" inurl:write-for-us :
However, as lots of people are using this method, you’ll often end up pitching the
same sites as everyone else. For that reason, a better method is to find a serial
guest blogger in your niche and look for sites they’ve written for.
For example, this search finds websites Ryan Stewart has written for:
You can also do this in Ahrefs’ Content Explorer (https://ahrefs.com/content-
explorer) by searching for [topic] author:[firstname lastname"] .
The benefit of using Content Explorer over Google is that you can filter the results
to focus on high-quality websites. Plus, not every site will use the /author/firstn
ame-lastname/ footprint.
For example, we can easily filter for posts from websites with a Domain Rating
(DR) above 30 and an estimated website traffic of at least 5K per month.
SIDENOTE. This can sometimes generate a few false positives, depending on how common
the person’s name is.
You can even highlight results from domains that haven’t linked to you so you can
prioritize getting backlinks from more websites.
4. Find resource page opportunities
Resource pages curate and link to the best resources on a topic. This makes them
great link prospects if you have a fitting resource.
For example, if you want to build links to a coffee resource, you can search
for this:
However, not all of these pages will be worth pitching. You’ll find that some just
link to their own resources, so you’ll need to sift through them and pitch the
relevant ones.
If you want an even easier way to find resource pages, try this:
For example, if you have PDFs behind lead magnets or content upgrades, you
probably want to protect those files to prevent people from finding them on
Google.
If we were bothered about people finding this (we’re not), we’d want to set this
file to noindex with an x-robots header response (https://ahrefs.com/blog/meta-
robots/).
For example, if you wanted to find Tim Soulo’s email address, you could search for
any of his tweets that mention the word “email” and “gmail.com” or “ahrefs.com”
(as his email address is almost certainly at one of those domains).
For example, let’s say we wanted to add some internal links to our list of SEO tips
(https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-tips/).
That said, the one downside of using search operators to find internal link
opportunities is that they don’t distinguish between linked and unlinked
mentions. In other words, they often find opportunities you’ve already taken
advantage of.
For example, our search found a mention of “SEO tips” in our list of SEO
techniques (https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-techniques/):
But if we find that mention on the page, we see that it’s already internally linked:
If this happens a lot and you find it frustrating, sign up for a free Ahrefs
Webmaster Tools (https://ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools) account and try this
instead:
It tells you:
FURTHER READING
If you search Google for “best email marketing tools,” you’ll find thousands of
results listing top picks:
Given that you probably want to be featured on these lists, it’ll be helpful to see
which ones do and don’t mention you already, right? That way, you can reach out
to the authors of lists not mentioning your tool and see if you can get them to
add you.
Luckily, you can do that by appending your search with -[your business name] :
Alternatively, if you want an even quicker method, you can use Ahrefs’ Content
Explorer (https://ahrefs.com/content-explorer).
If you’re not familiar with Content Explorer, it’s a search engine for marketers with
an index of over 11 billion pages. You can use this search to find listicles that
don’t mention your brand: title:"best [whatever]" -[yourbrand] .
For example, if we look for lists of the best email marketing tools that don’t
mention ConvertKit, we get 3,182 results:
What makes Content Explorer (https://ahrefs.com/content-explorer) more
convenient than Google is that you can filter the results by things like DR,
estimated website and page traffic, and more. Then you can export them in a few
clicks.
For example, if we restrict the results to one page per domain and filter for
websites with a DR of 30 or more, we narrow things down from 3,182 to
156 pages.
This is a much more manageable number of websites to review and potentially
reach out to.
As my colleague, Si Quan Ong, has proven, it’s a great place to build brand
awareness. He’s had over 2 million views on his answers and continues to get
over 25K views every month despite his recent inactivity:
When it comes to finding questions to answer, Quora’s search function works well.
The downside is that you can only search for one topic at once.
As Quora uses the question itself as the URL, you can overcome this problem with
this search operator: site:quora.com inurl:([topic 1] | topic 2) .
For example, if you have a health and fitness website, you can search for
something like this:
If you’re an Ahrefs user, you can even combine this with the SEO Toolbar
(https://ahrefs.com/seo-toolbar) to overlay traffic estimates on the SERP. That
way, you can focus on answering questions that already get organic traffic.
Or if you want an even faster method, try this:
This will give you a list of relevant Quora answers, sorted by their estimated
monthly search traffic from high to low.
For example, one of the questions above asks whether it’s better to make a
protein shake with milk or water and gets an estimated 792 monthly visits. If you
can answer this question well and get upvoted, chances are hundreds of people
will see your answer every month.
Even better, as you can include links in your answers, these answers can send
some nice referral traffic your way.
For example, here’s how many posts another SEO blog published in December
2022:
And here’s how many it published in the whole of 2022:
Just be aware that this operator isn’t always 100% accurate, as it includes
updated pages.
For example, the search below returns a post with January 25, 2022, attached
to it:
But if we plug that post’s URL into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer (https://ahrefs.com/site-
explorer), we see that it’s been attracting organic traffic since 2019. So it must
have existed long before 2022.
If you’re an Ahrefs user and want a more accurate way to see a competitor’s
publishing frequency, run a site: search in Content Explorer
(https://ahrefs.com/content-explorer) and filter for “Pages published once.”
Final thoughts
Google advanced search operators are super powerful. You just have to know how
to use them.
But I have to admit that some are more useful than others, especially when it
comes to SEO. I find myself using site: , intitle: , and inurl: often. Yet I
rarely use allintitle: and many of the other more obscure operators.
I’d also add that many operators are borderline useless unless paired with
another operator, or two, or three.
So do play around with them and let me know what you come up with.
I’d be more than happy to add any useful combinations you discover to the post.
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Article by
Joshua Hardwick
(https://ahrefs.com/blog/author/joshua-
hardwick/)
Head of Content @ Ahrefs (or, in plain English, I'm
the guy responsible for ensuring that every blog
post we publish is EPIC).
(https://twitter.com/JoshuaCHardwick)
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