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:

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 youâ€™re doing, youâ€™re running slower than the leaders in the field and they are way out ahead of you. You canâ€™t understand a Web siteâ€™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.

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Pros and Cons of Google Advanced Query Operators | SEO Theory - SEO Theory and Analysis Blog Says:
July 24th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
[...] noticed a link to SEO Theory from this nice roundup on Google advanced query operators by Lorna Li. Without meaning to steal her thunder, I’d like to offer some comments on popular [...]
Celina Buy Says:
August 7th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
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.
Google Search Sucks Says:
October 9th, 2008 at 4:04 am
I wish more people outside the online marketing community knew about these operators. It would save them so many hours searching online.
SEO Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
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!!!
Dave (C4G) Says:
December 4th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
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.
SEO Services > Says:
February 1st, 2009 at 2:34 pm
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
nidiron Says:
February 5th, 2009 at 7:53 am
wow..thanks for sharing this. its really good, i dont know about all this. i’m a noob..thanx
Private Niche Empire Says:
February 19th, 2009 at 6:02 am
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.
Niyaz | SEO Says:
March 10th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
you didnt include ‘ related: ‘ which shows related links … newayz i learnt some from here which i didnt really knew thanks for the info!!
Internet Marketing Says:
March 17th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
an important blog must be visited by all who are intrested in net marketing and business
Internet Marketing Says:
April 6th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Pretty cool post, well thought out, and a great resource for those new to the industry! Nice blog all-in-all!
Brennan @ Public Relations Firms Says:
April 12th, 2009 at 12:40 am
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.
Internet Marketing UK Says:
April 23rd, 2009 at 3:47 pm
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!
Solid Marketer Says:
April 26th, 2009 at 11:49 am
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
Miami SEO Says:
May 15th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
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.
deposito Says:
May 28th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
I’m also using both searchengines Google as well as Yahoo. Yahoo for the backlinks and Google for the internal links.
Chuck Says:
August 29th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Good basic ideas, but using free SEO tools like spydermate will help as well.

http://spydermate.com