Advanced Google Search Operators for 2024

Quick Summary:

Google Search Operators restrict your searches and provide reliable results.

• Exact Match Searches: Enter search phrases in quote marks (“”) for exact match results.
• Exclude Words: Enter the word you wish to exclude from search results with a hyphen (-).
• Exclude Exact-Match Phrases: Enter your search word in quotations (“”), followed by a hyphen (-), and type the phrase to exclude.
• OR: This command tells Google to show results for either keyword before and after OR.
• Customize OR Command: First insert one search term in quotation marks (“”) before the OR command, then enter the following phrase.
• Wildcard: An asterisk (*) between the search word shows variations and generates additional content suggestions. Command: search*term.
• Include Words (+): Find results using several phrases using plus.
• AROUND (): Search for sentence phrases near each other with AROUND.
• Specific Site Search: Site:yourwebsite.com “Search term” returns site-specific results.
• Search Related Sites: See sites linked to a website you know using linked: site name.
• Cached Versions: The cache: site name syntax shows when Google indexed a web page’s most recent cached version.
• Specific Domain Type: Use site:domain type to find domain-specific search results.
• Range of Numbers: Use two periods (..) between starting and finishing numbers for number range searches.
• Page Titles: Use intitle:keyword to filter page title results by keyword.
• Phrases in Page Title: Using the allintitle: phrase command, you can get results that have a particular phase included in the page title.
• Keyword in Page Content: To locate any page that has the specified keyword anywhere in the content, use the intext:search term command.
• Phrases in Page Content: Use the command allintext:phrase to find pages that include phrases anywhere in the text body.
• Keyword in the Anchor Text: You can look for a specific keyword in the anchor text by using the anchor:keyword command.
• Keyword in the URL: When searching within the URL, use the inurl:keyword command to locate a term.
• Content by a Specific Author: Use the allinpostauthor:name command to construct a shortlist of the writing produced by your favorite author.
• Location: Utilize the location operator’s loc:name to do efficient local searches.
• Unsecured Pages: Use the site:yoursite.com -inurl: https command to find pages on a website that might be dangerous.
• Definition: Use the define: search term command to find out what a keyword means.
• File Types: Use the search operator to get search results based on the type of file. Filetype: indicate the format of the file.

Google search operators: the complete list

An overview of the tasks performed by each Google search operator is provided below.

They fit into three categories that I’ve created:

• Working: Works as intended.
• Unreliable: Although Google hasn’t formally deprecated it, the results are inconsistent.
• Not working: Officially deprecated by Google.

Here’s the full list:

Working

Another option is to use Google Autocomplete’s wildcard function, the _ operator.

Unreliable

Not working (officially dropped by Google)