When it comes to search there is an infinitude (around 42) of different operators you can use to really narrow down your results and save time trawling through unrelated, unreliable or uninspired links.
We’ve already covered the essentials in Using Basic Google Search Operators for a Better Search so if you need to brush up again on your AND/OR’s, Exacts and Wildcards hit the link above, otherwise continue below, search disciple.
Intext Search: intext:Institutional History
Let’s say for example, that for a long while you’ve been hankering for an institutional history fix and you happened across a website, had a fascinating time, but completely forgot to bookmark the url. You’re not sure of the name of the site or any specific pages, oh dear. Worry not, google’s got you! By using the Intext: search operator you can look in any part of a site’s content, titles or URL to find a specific set of words. You can also do the inverse with a negative operator. Huzzah!
Allintext Search: allintext:institutional history
Similar to using quotation marks for an exact match, allintext: ensures that all the words you are looking for will appear together on a page.
Intitle Search: intitle:institutional history
The exact same premise as the above, only this confines the search to a site’s url. Useful for saving time having to navigate through a site’s internal structure and making a search that little bit quicker.
Site Search: site:www.institutionalhistory.com
Now this one’s a biggy. What the site: operator allows is complete control over which websites will appear in your search results. Maybe you’re only interested in a particular website or you want to remove the sheer abundance of social sites from results: site: has your back.
Around Search: Around:www.institutionalhistory.com
Maybe you’re not as fussy as those who use site: (-cough- philistines -cough-), maybe you have some idea of the type of site you need but you don’t really care which. Around: will show you the results only from those websites related to the one you specified after the search operater. Ah, freedom.
Filetype Search: Filetype:pdf
Useful for searching for, or excluding, certain types of pages or files. Compatible file types are: Google Earth (KML, KMZ), Microsoft Excel (XLS, XLSX), Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT, PPTX), Microsoft Word (DOC, DOCX) and more.
There we have it, your list of the most useful advanced search operators. These can be combined with basic to make really powerful, incredibly swift searches and minimise time wastage online.
Examples in use
So, I’m starting to research institutions within the UK but every time I do, the Women’s Institute site keeps coming up and deluging me with preserve making pages. I also only wish to see word documents as my pdf reader doesn’t work.
Intext: institutional history -site:www.thewi.org.uk Filetype:doc
Maybe I now want to research the life of a convict called something Rungay but someone by that same name had committed a crime a century later, giving me anachronistic results. Here’s what we can do.
-site:facebook.com -site:dailymail.com -site:twitter.com -site:Instagram.com ( Crime OR Felony OR Prison OR Court) AND * Rungay
We hope you enjoyed our free Google walk through. If you have any questions regarding the search function, please email us here.