8 Google Advanced Search Operators for SEO
Google advance search operators are useful search queries that can help you determine your competitive environment and assess the level and degree of work that an SEO campaign requires. Here are the Google search operators most commonly used by SEOs: 1. site: Site:www.website.com will show you the number of pages in your website that are indexed by Google. If you find a large discrepancy (> 20%) between the number of web pages indexed and the number of pages you have published, you will need to identify and resolve the technical issues that may be blocking web crawlers. 2. allinurl For a quick way to see if a specific page is indexed, you can use the allinurl:www.webpage.com query. Google will return the page in its results page if it is indexed or show no results if it isn’t. 3. link: Link:www.webpage.com will display all sites linking to this particular webpage. Since link popularity is an important search engine ranking factor, it’s important to determine how many links you have, and how many you need. You should definitely use this search query on your competitors. It’s important to note that Google link operator has taken a huge beating from the SEO community for its lack of accuracy. Many SEOs use Yahoo Site Explorer for more accurate link analysis. 4. allinanchor: Allinanchor:keyword returns all the pages/sites that have links from other pages that contain those specific keywords in link anchor text. 5 allintitle: Allintitle:keyword returns a list of websites that contain the keyword in its title tag. 6. allintext: Allintext:keyword tells Google to display webpages that contain that particular keyword in the body of the page. It tends to give prominence to documents that contain the keyword at the beginning of the body text. 7. cache: Cache:www.webpage.com will show you the last time the Google crawled your web page and what version of the page it has in its cache. Cache:www.webpage.com keyword will show you the keyword or key phrases highlighted within the cached content. 8. info: Info:www.webpage.com shows a variety of data about that web page, such as the latest cache date, other similar web pages, web pages that link to your site, web pages within your site and web pages containing the your domain name. You can use Google advanced search operators them to keep track of your SEO efforts and keep an eye on your competition. However, understand that the data these operators really just provide a ball-park estimation. According to Michael Martinez, using Google’s advanced search query operators has its pros and cons:
From www.seo-theory.com:
Search engine results analysis has to focus on the most important factors for optimization. You need to know:
1. Which pages in your site are indexed
2. How often your page data is recached
3. How many of your pages pass value through their links
4. How many of your pages are receiving value from other pages
In some cases you can (and should) combine query operators to refine your analysis. If rank-checks and backlink profiles are all you’re doing, you’re running slower than the leaders in the field and they are way out ahead of you. You can’t understand a Web site’s performance simply by looking at a handful of targeted queries and running backlink reports on Yahoo!
The search engines look at hundreds of signals to determine how to crawl, index, and rank sites. You should be looking at hundreds of signals, too.
Google advance search operators are useful search queries that can help you determine your competitive environment and assess the level and degree of work that an SEO campaign requires. Here are the Google search operators most commonly used by SEOs:
1. site:
Site:www.website.com will show you the number of pages in your website that are indexed by Google.
If you find a large discrepancy (> 20%) between the number of web pages indexed and the number of pages you have published, you will need to identify and resolve the technical issues that may be blocking web crawlers.
2. allinurl
For a quick way to see if a specific page is indexed, you can use the allinurl:www.webpage.com query. Google will return the page in its results page if it is indexed or show no results if it isn’t.
3. link:
Link:www.webpage.com will display all sites linking to this particular webpage. Since link popularity is an important search engine ranking factor, it’s important to determine how many links you have, and how many you need. You should definitely use this search query on your competitors.
It’s important to note that Google link operator has taken a huge beating from the SEO community for its lack of accuracy. Many SEOs use Yahoo Site Explorer for more accurate link analysis.
4. allinanchor:
Allinanchor:keyword returns all the pages/sites that have links from other pages that contain those specific keywords in link anchor text.
5 allintitle:
Allintitle:keyword returns a list of websites that contain the keyword in its title tag.
6. allintext:
Allintext:keyword tells Google to display webpages that contain that particular keyword in the body of the page.
It tends to give prominence to documents that contain the keyword at the beginning of the body text.
7. cache:
Cache:www.webpage.com will show you the last time the Google crawled your web page and what version of the page it has in its cache.
Cache:www.webpage.com keyword will show you the keyword or key phrases highlighted within the cached content.
8. info:
Info:www.webpage.com shows a variety of data about that web page, such as the latest cache date, other similar web pages, web pages that link to your site, web pages within your site and web pages containing the your domain name.
You can use Google advanced search operators them to keep track of your SEO efforts and keep an eye on your competition. However, understand that the data these operators really just provide a ball-park estimation.
According to Michael Martinez, using Google’s advanced search query operators has its pros and cons:
From www.seo-theory.com:
Search engine results analysis has to focus on the most important factors for optimization. You need to know:1. Which pages in your site are indexed
2. How often your page data is recached
3. How many of your pages pass value through their links
4. How many of your pages are receiving value from other pagesIn some cases you can (and should) combine query operators to refine your analysis. If rank-checks and backlink profiles are all you’re doing, you’re running slower than the leaders in the field and they are way out ahead of you. You can’t understand a Web site’s performance simply by looking at a handful of targeted queries and running backlink reports on Yahoo!
The search engines look at hundreds of signals to determine how to crawl, index, and rank sites. You should be looking at hundreds of signals, too.
August 7, 2008
I wasn’t aware of those anchor ones. After reading this I did some experimentation and I think I have some good tips for anyone who wants to find out hoe competitive a keyword is and what you will likely need to rank for that keyword.
If you do intitle:keyword, inanchor:keyword and compare the results you can find out what is working. Additionally, if there are sites that drop a lot when doing these queries it will be due to the fact that they have a strong domain and not link text.
October 9, 2008
I wish more people outside the online marketing community knew about these operators. It would save them so many hours searching online.
November 26, 2008
Thanks for the list of advanced queries! This is a great list for SEO newbies.
Oh yes, I really like the look of your blog! I’ll be back!!!
December 4, 2008
I use both Google and Yahoo for different tasks.
I use Yahoo for checking backlinks
ie: linkdomain:lornali.com -site:lornali.com
and use the Google site: command to check for how many pages Google has indexed from my site.
AllTheWeb.com (which is owned by Yahoo) is also useful for checking backlinks with thte same commands as used for Yahoo.
February 1, 2009
Dave, you beat me too it! I saw this post and was going to add that you can use the operator “linkdomain:lornali.com -site:lornali.com” which I actually use a lot now a days. I’ve found it’s way more accurate as it will remove the links from the domain pointing to it’s self. But for those of you that don’t know how to use it here is an explanation.
This operator is for Yahoo and you should replace lornali.com with your domain or the one you wish to check links on (preferably with out the www in front of it). So you would replace the 2 times lornali.com is in the operator.
What this operator does is query Yahoo for all links pointing to that domain no matter what page, folder, ect… Then the “-site:YourSite.com” removes all the links in the results from that same domain. You could also use that to remove links from other domains by entering some other domain instead of that site’s domain.
Buy anyways, hope that help
February 5, 2009
wow..thanks for sharing this. its really good, i dont know about all this. i’m a noob..thanx
February 19, 2009
Good breakdown on the queries. I find that I use the seobook and seo quake toolbars more and more now to do some of those same things.
March 10, 2009
you didnt include ‘ related: ‘ which shows related links … newayz i learnt some from here which i didnt really knew
thanks for the info!!
March 17, 2009
an important blog must be visited by all who are intrested in net marketing and business
April 6, 2009
Pretty cool post, well thought out, and a great resource for those new to the industry! Nice blog all-in-all!
April 12, 2009
I am always amazed at how many serious webmasters look over Google’s Webmaster Tools. It saves so much time by even telling you where you rank in their search engines for your top terms. Google always seems to do a great job at helping you advance your online marketing and it is usually free with no catches. Indexing is something you really need to keep an eye on especially as your website increases in pages.
April 23, 2009
I use a couple of these, inurl, intitle and find it can really help in finding a specific, relevant site. Although it seems there are other operators I have neglected so I will definately check those out too, thanks!
April 26, 2009
I don’t know if my first comment was properly submitted so here I go again
As an advanced Internet user I use the advanced google operators a lot and I love them, but you should always keep in mind that the average Internet user does not know them. Therefore only target Seo keywords for the non “”-surrounded searchstring
May 15, 2009
I wish Google offered something like the linkdomain: command on yahoo. Link: displays backlinks to a website randomly…and the list never seems particularly useful as a means of identifying link profile growth or finding link opportunities from competitor back link profiles.