Monday, 20 August 2012

Google Search options

The webpages maintained by the Google Help Center have text describing more than 15 various search options.

The Google operators:


  • OR – Search for either one, such as "price high OR low" searches for "price" with "high" or "low".
  • "-" – Search while excluding a word, such as "apple -tree" searches where word "tree" is not used.
  • "+" – (Removed on 19 October 2011). Force inclusion of a word, such as "Name +of +the Game" to require the words "of" & "the" to appear on a matching page.
  • "*" – Wildcard operator to match any words between other specific words.

Some of the query options are as follows:


  • define: – The query prefix "define:" will provide a definitionof the words listed after it.
  • stocks: – After "stocks:" the query terms are treated as stock ticker symbols for lookup.
  • site: – Restrict the results to those websites in the given domain, such as, site:www.acmeacme.com. The option "site:com" will search all domain URLs named with ".com" (no space after "site:").
  • allintitle: – Only the page titles are searched (not the remaining text on each webpage).
  • intitle: – Prefix to search in a webpage title, such as "intitle:google search" will list pages with word "google" in title, and word "search" anywhere (no space after "intitle:").
  • allinurl: – Only the page URL address lines are searched (not the text inside each webpage).
  • inurl: – Prefix for each word to be found in the URL; others words are matched anywhere, such as "inurl:acme search" matches "acme" in a URL, but matches "search" anywhere (no space after "inurl:").

The page-display options (or query types) are:


  • cache: – Highlights the search-words within the cached document, such as "cache:www.google.com xxx" shows cached content with word "xxx" highlighted.
  • link: – The prefix "link:" will list webpages that have links to the specified webpage, such as "link:www.google.com" lists webpages linking to the Google homepage.
  • related: – The prefix "related:" will list webpages that are "similar" to a specified web page.
  • info: – The prefix "info:" will display some background information about one specified webpage, such as, info:www.google.com. Typically, the info is the first text (160 bytes, about 23 words) contained in the page, displayed in the style of a results entry (for just the 1 page as matching the search).
  • filetype: – results will only show files of the desired type (ex filetype:pdf will return pdf files)

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