Advanced
Search Made Easy
(Search information from Google.com)
You can increase the accuracy of your searches by adding
operators that fine-tune your keywords. Most of the options
listed on this page can be entered directly into the Google
search box or selected from Google's
Advanced
Search page.
Additionally, Google supports several advanced
operators which are query words that have special
meaning to Google. For a complete list,
click
here.
"
+ " Searches
Google ignores common words and characters
such as "where" and "how", as well as
certain single digits and single letters, because they tend
to slow down your search without improving the results.
Google will indicate if a common word has been excluded by
displaying details on the results page below the search box.
If a common word is essential to getting
the results you want, you can include it by putting a
"+" sign in front of it. (Be sure to include a
space before the "+" sign.)
Another method for doing this is
conducting a phrase search, which simply means putting
quotation marks around 2 or more words. Common words in a
phrase search (e.g., "where are you") are included
in the search.
For example, to search for Star Wars,
Episode I, use:
"
- " Searches
Sometimes what you're searching for has
more than one meaning; "bass" can refer to fishing
or music. You can exclude a word from your search by putting
a minus sign ("-") immediately in front of the
term you want to avoid. (Be sure to include a space before
the minus sign.)
For example, to find web pages about bass
that do not contain the word "music", type:
Phrase
Searches
Search for complete phrases by enclosing
them in quotation marks. Words enclosed in double quotes
("like this") will appear together in all results
exactly as you have entered them. Phrase searches are
especially useful when searching for famous sayings or
proper names.
"OR"
Searches
Google supports the logical "OR"
operator. To retrieve pages that include either word A or
word B, use an uppercase OR between terms.
For example, to search for a vacation in
either London or Paris, just type:
Domain
Restrict
If you know the website you want to search
but aren't sure where the information is located within that
site, you can use Google to search only that domain. Do this
by entering what you're looking for followed by the word
"site" and a colon followed by the domain name.
For example, to find admission information
on Stanford's site, enter:
Other
Advanced Search Features
- Language: specify which language you would like
your results returned in.
- Date: restrict your results to the past three,
six, or twelve months.
- Occurrences: specify where your search terms
occur on the page - anywhere on the page, in the title,
or in the url.
- Domains: search only a specific website or
exclude that site completely from your search.
- SafeSearch: Google's SafeSearch screens for
sites that contain this type of information and
eliminates them from search results.
Advanced Operators
Google supports several advanced operators, which are
query words that have special meaning to google. Typically
these operators modify the search in some way, or even tell
Google to do a totally different type of search. For
instance, "link:" is a special operator, and the
query [link:www.google.com] doesn't do a normal search but
instead finds all web pages that have links to
www.google.com.
Several of the more common operators use punctuation
instead of words, or do not require a colon. Among these
operators are OR, "" (the quote operator), - (the
minus operator), and + (the plus operator). More information
on these types of operators is available on the
Basics
of Search page.
Many of these special operators are accessible from the
Advanced
Search page, but some are not. Below is a list of all
the special operators Google supports.
cache:
The query [cache:
] will show the version of the web page that Google has in
its cache. For instance, [cache:www.google.com] will show
Google's cache of the Google homepage. Note there can be no
space between the "cache:" and the web page url.
If you include other words in the query, Google will
highlight those words within the cached document. For
instance, [cache:www.google.com web] will show the cached
content with the word "web" highlighted.
This functionality is also accessible by clicking on the
"Cached" link on Google's main results page.
link:
The query [link:
] will list webpages that have links to the specified
webpage. For instance, [link:www.google.com] will list
webpages that have links pointing to the Google homepage.
Note there can be no space between the "link:" and
the web page url.
This functionality is also accessible from the
Advanced
Search page, under Page Specific Search > Links.
related:
The query [related:
] will list web pages that are "similar" to a
specified web page. For instance, [related:www.google.com]
will list web pages that are similar to the Google homepage.
Note there can be no space between the "related:"
and the web page url.
This functionality is also accessible by clicking on the
"Similar Pages" link on Google's main results
page, and from the
Advanced
Search page, under Page Specific Search > Similar.
info:
The query [info:
] will present some information that Google has about that
web page. For instance, [info:www.google.com] will show
information about the Google homepage. Note there can be no
space between the "info:" and the web page url.
This functionality is also accessible by typing the web
page url directly into a Google search box.
spell:
If you begin a query with the [spell:] operator, Google
will spell-check your query instead of performing it. If it
notices potential misspellings, it will offer alternate
queries for you to try. For instance, [spell: corect my
speeling] will provide several possible spell corrections
for this query.
A similar feature is applied automatically to all
queries. Look for links of the form 'Did you mean:
"correct my spelling"' below the search box.
stocks:
If you begin a query with the [stocks:] operator, Google
will treat the rest of the query terms as stock ticker
symbols, and will link to a page showing stock information
for those symbols. For instance, [stock: intc yhoo] will
show information about Intel and Yahoo. (Note you must type
the ticker symbols, not the company name.)
This functionality is also available if you search just
on the stock symbols (e.g. [ intc yhoo ]) and then click on
the "Show stock quotes" link on the results page.
site:
If you include [site:
] in your query, Google will restrict the results to those
websites in the given domain. For instance, [help
site:www.google.com] will find pages about help within
www.google.com. [help site:com] will find pages about help
within .com urls. Note there can be no space between the
"site:" and the domain.
This functionality is also available through
Advanced
Search page, under Advanced Web Search > Domains.
allintitle:
If you start a query with [allintitle:], Google will
restrict the results to those with all of the query words in
the title. For instance, [allintitle: google search] will
return only documents that have both "google" and
"search" in the title.
This functionality is also available through
Advanced
Search page, under Advanced Web Search >
Occurrences.
intitle:
If you include [intitle:
] in your query, Google will restrict the results to
documents containing that word in the title. For instance, [intitle:google
search] will return documents that mention the word "google"
in their title, and mention the word "search"
anywhere in the document (title or no). Note there can be no
space between the "intitle:" and the following
word.
Putting [intitle:] in front of every word in your query
is equivalent to putting [allintitle:] at the front of your
query: [intitle:google intitle:search] is the same as [allintitle:
google search].
allinurl:
If you start a query with [allinurl:], Google will
restrict the results to those with all of the query words in
the url. For instance, [allinurl: google search] will return
only documents that have both "google" and
"search" in the url.
Note that [allinurl:] works on words, not url
components. In particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, [allinurl:
foo/bar] will restrict the results to page with the words
"foo" and "bar" in the url, but won't
require that they be separated by a slash within that url,
that they be adjacent, or that they be in that particular
word order. There is currently no way to enforce these
constraints.
This functionality is also available through
Advanced
Search page, under Advanced Web Search >
Occurrences.
inurl:
If you include [inurl:
] in your query, Google will restrict the results to
documents containing that word in the url. For instance, [inurl:google
search] will return documents that mention the word "google"
in their url, and mention the word "search"
anywhere in the document (url or no). Note there can be no
space between the "inurl:" and the following word.
Note that [inurl:] works on words, not url
components. In particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, in
the query [google inurl:foo/bar], the "inurl:"
operator will affect only the word "foo", which is
the single word following the inurl: operator, and will not
affect the word bar. The query [google inurl:foo inurl:bar]
can be used to require both "foo" and
"bar" to be in the url.
Putting "inurl:" in front of every word in your
query is equivalent to putting "allinurl:" at the
front of your query: [inurl:google inurl:search] is the same
as [allinurl: google search].
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