How to use Google search operators

How to use Google search operators
Remacle Jean-Claude
4 minutes
2022-01-20
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Sometimes finding something on Google search is like searching for a needle in a haystack.
But with the help of some specific combination of words and symbols, you can find that needle a little bit easier and much faster.

Google is allowing you to use search operators so that you can focus on certain keywords and excluding others.

Google search operators can include:

  • symbols like @ or *
  • punctuation's like quote marks
  • words as AND or OR
  • and even a combination of all of the above

How to use the search operators

It's very easy to use the search operators.
You can just enter them directly in the Google search box, just like the text you type to look for.

Overview search operators

Below you can find a list of Google Search Operators split up in 2 sections (basic and advanced).

Don't forget, you can combine almost any combination of text searches, basic and advanced search operators.

Basic search operators

These search operators are the most used and commonly know

" " You'll get an exact match of your search term just by surrounding it with quote marks
* The asterisk, also know as the wildcard
# By using this symbol you can search for hashtags
AND Search results will show matches that contains both search terms by placing AND (in caps) between your search terms
OR Place OR (in caps) between search terms if you want search results that contains one OR the other search term
| The pipe symbol is the same as OR
@ By using this symbol you can search your search term in social media
$ You can use the dollar sign if you want to look for prices
Use the euro symbol if you look for prices in euro's
( ) By placing the search terms between parenthesis you can group commands
.. If you're looking for a range of numbers, you can place two periods between the numbers
- place a hyphen before any term to exclude it from the search results
in place "in" between two units if you want to convert them

Advanced search operators

These search operators are mostly used to drill deeper down in the search results.

site: to search within a certain domain or site
cache: get Google most recent cached version of the webpage
intitle: search only in the page title's
allintitle: all the following words are being searched in the page title's
inposttitle: search only in title of a blog post
inanchor: search for specific words in anchor text
inurl: search only in the url's
allintheurl: all the following words are being searched in the url's
related: find websites that are related to another website
filetype: search for a specific file type
intext: search only in the body of the page
allintext: all the following words are being search in the body of the page
define: search for the definition of the word
weather: search for the weather of a certain location
stocks: get stock information
map: get a map of a certain location
AROUND(x) place AROUND(3) between two search terms to get only results where both terms are within (x) words of eachother
src: search for the image url provided in the search term
imagesize: search for images with a specific size

Conclusion

As you can see, it's not that hard to use search operators to find a specific result in the overwhelming search results that Google gives you.

Start with first the basic search operators and if you still have to much results you can drill down with the advanced ones.

Hopefully you can now find what your looking for on Google much faster by just reading this short article.