Google Hacks: Search syntax

Special search syntaxes.s These are some of my favourite ones.  I use these often during my searches:

intitle:

intitle: restricts your search to the titles of web pages. The variation allintitle: finds pages wherein all the words specified appear in the title of the web page. Using allintitle: is basically the same as using the intitle: before each keyword.

intitle:"george bush"

allintitle:"money supply" economics

You may wish to avoid the allintitle: variation, because it doesn’t mix well with some of the other syntax elements.

intext:

intext: searches only body text (i.e., ignores link text, URLs, and titles). While its uses are limited, it’s perfect for finding query words that might be too common in URLs or link titles.

intext:"yahoo.com"

intext:html

There’s an allintext: variation, but again, this doesn’t play well with others.

inanchor:

inanchor: searches for text in a page’s link anchors. A link anchor is the descriptive text of a link. For example, the link anchor in the HTML code <a href="http://www.oreilly.com">O'Reilly Media</a> is “O’Reilly Media.”

inanchor:"tom peters"

As with other in*: syntax elements, there’s an allinanchor: variation, which works in a similar way (i.e., all the keywords specified must appear in a page’s link anchors).

site:

site: allows you to narrow your search by either a site or a top-level domain. The AltaVista search engine, by contrast, has two syntax elements for this function (host: and domain ), but Google has only the one.

site:loc.gov

site:thomas.loc.gov

site:edu

site:nc.us

Be aware that site: is no good for trying to search for a page that exists beneath the main or default site (i.e., in a subdirectory such as /~sam/album/).  Use inurl: instead.

inurl:

inurl: restricts your search to the URLs of web pages. This syntax tends to work well for finding search and help pages, because they tend to be rather regular in composition. An allinurl: variation finds all the words listed in a URL but doesn’t mix well with some other special syntax.

inurl:help

allinurl:search help

You’ll see that using the inurl: query instead of the site: query has one immediate advantage: you can use it to search subdirectories.

You can also use inurl: in combination with the site: syntax to draw out information on subdomains. For example, how many subdomains does oreilly.com really have? A quick query will help you figure that out:

site:oreilly.com -inurl:www.oreilly.com

This query asks Google to list all pages from the oreilly.com domain, but leave out those pages which are from the common subdomain www, since you already know about that one.

link:

link: returns a list of pages linking to the specified URL. Enter link:www.google.com and you’ll get a list of pages that link to the Google home page, www.google.com (not anywhere in the google.com domain). Don’t worry about including the http:// bit; you don’t need it and, indeed, Google appears to ignore it even if you do put it in. link: works just as well with “deep” URLs—http://www.raelity.org/apps/blosxom/, for instance—as with top-level URLs such as raelity.org.

cache:

cache: finds a copy of the page that Google indexed even if that page is no longer available at its original URL or has since changed its content completely.

cache:www.yahoo.com

If Google returns a result that appears to have little to do with your query, you’re almost sure to find what you’re looking for in the latest cached version of the page at Google.

The Google cache is particularly useful for retrieving a previous version of a page that changes often.

daterange:

daterange: limits your search to a particular date or range of dates on which a page was indexed. It’s important to note that a daterange: search has nothing to do with when a page was created, but when it was indexed by Google. So a page created on February 2 but not indexed by Google until April 11 would turn up in a daterange: search for April 11.

"Geri Halliwell" "Spice Girls" daterange:2450958-2450968

filetype:

filetype: searches the suffixes or filename extensions. These are usually, but not necessarily, different file types; filetype:htm and filetype:html will give you different result counts, even though they’re the same file type. You can even search for different page generators—such as ASP, PHP, CGI, and so forth—presuming the site isn’t hiding them behind redirection and proxying. Google indexes several different Microsoft formats, including PowerPoint (.ppt), Excel (.xls), and Word (.doc).

homeschooling filetype:pdf

"leading economic indicators" filetype:ppt