Google Search Commands & Operators that YOU should be using in 2017

Upgrade Your Search Game Today

With more people using Google than any other search engine available on the web, it’s important to ensure you are making the most of this commanding search index. There are a vast number of Google Search Commands and Search Operators built into the search engine which can help you find what you’re looking for extremely quickly and efficiently.

Google Search Operators

A Google Search Operator is an effective tool in the ecosystem of SEO. They can help you gain valuable insights into SEO opportunities and pinpoint technical seo issues you would not have identified otherwise. We have collated a list of the top Google search operators which you should be using to boost your SEO efforts:

Inposttitle –  Example use = inposttitle:Seo York

This search operator is perfect when you are performing research for an upcoming blog post.  You can easily find blogs which contain a certain term within the blog title and identify topics where your new blog post may be most useful to readers.

Allintitle – Example use = allintitle:how to conduct keyword research

A super useful search operator which helps you find pages that match content you are writing about. You can use this operator to find out what others are writing about a certain topic and can then use this information to make your content better than theirs!

Allinurl – Example use = allinurl:amazon iPad

This will find all internal pages of a site which contain the chosen term within the URL. This is a useful operator for e-commerce sites when conducting price comparisons and ensuring their prices are competitive!

Cache – Example use = Cache:Website.com

The Google cache operator allows you to find the most recent cache google has of a specific web page. This is great for identifying when Google last crawled your web page.

AROUND –  Example use = Digital AROUND(2) Marketing

The AROUND search operator returns results where the two terms are within (X) words of each one another. This is a terrific way to identify search results where two or more terms appear on a single page.

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Google Search Commands

A Google search command is a shortcut that enables you to find exactly what you are looking for, fast. They take you above and beyond the regular text search and advance your search game to the next level. They are useful when conducting several SEO tasks including blog research, keyword research, competitor analysis. We have highlighted a number of search commands we use regularly with examples on how you can utilize each:

Specific Phrase Match –  Example use = “SEO York”

Placing a phrase within quotation marks tells google to only retrieve web pages with the words you specified in the exact order and proximity that you entered them. This ensures your exact searches are always efficient!

Minus – Example use = Samsung -Galaxy

Placing a minus (-) before any term excludes that term from the results.

OR – Example use = Keyword OR Research

Google search automatically defaults to the logical AND between terms when you search a phrase. However, if you want to specify a logical OR, simply insert “OR” (all caps) between your two phrases.

.. (search within a number range) – Example use = iPhone Announcement 2015..2017

The search within a number range is a great search command when looking for results between a range of numbers/dates. In addition to the above example, you could also use this command to find products between a certain price. For example Adidas Shoes £50..£150

Site – Example = Site:Edge45.co.uk

This command restricts the results to just a single site. When you perform this search, it lists all of the pages that Google has indexed. This is useful as you can quickly identify any web pages that may be missing and fix them accordingly.

Related – Example = related:www.bbc.co.uk

This search command shows related results to the URL that you specified. It is a great command to use when conducting competitor analysis and to see what Google thinks are related websites.

Info – Example = info:www.edge45.co.uk

The info search command provides information on a specific URL. This is a useful command when you want to visualise how a certain page is appearing within the search results.