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.
