Google search operators for SEO
Google operators can be very useful for SEO. These can give us interesting and valuable information such as pages that contain certain words in their URL, indexed pages of a certain site or which domains point to a certain site. Several weeks ago we talked about very useful tools for SEO, such asor for example, another great super complete application. Although Google’s operators are not as complete as these tools, they are a free and, above all, fast utility, which will serve us for things as varied as knowing the indexing status of a site or information to carry out actions of link building.
What are Google operators?
Let’s start with the basics, they are words or symbols that we can add to restrict the search results that Google presents us.
Between the best Google operators for an SEO we can find the following:
1. site:
The operator site: is used to show us the search results of only a certain domain. For example, if we want to see only the search results of the elmundo.es domain, we must write
site:elmundo.es
As we can see in the previous screenshot, this operator is very useful to know how many indexed pages this website has. Moz recently released
2.link:
The link operator: is used to show us search results that point or link to a certain URL. For example, if we want to see which pages point to the domain www.amazon.com, we must enter the following:
link:amazon.com
Clarify that the search results presented by Google in this case may not be up to date and not all of them are displayed. That is, there may be links created in this case to Amazon.com that are more recent and do not appear in these results. Either way, it’s always an interesting way to see who’s targeting a certain domain (eg my competition). This is quite interesting for link building actions. In other words, knowing where they link to my competition, I can find opportunities where I can look for links or mentions of my brand or website.
3.inurl:
This search operator looks for URLs that contain the entered keyword. That is, if we want to search for URLs that contain the word “Adwords”, we will only have to write the following:
inurl:adwords
This search operator admits several keywords, that is, we could put inurl:adwords seo and here in the results it would present us with either results that contain seo and adwords or only seo or only adwords.
4. allinurl:
It has the same function as the previous search operator, but in this case if we put several words, it will only show us URLs that always contain the words that we have written. That is, if I put:
allinurl:seo sem adwords
It will only present us URLs that contain the three words, seo, sem and adwords.
Both inurl and allinurl are very interesting to combine with operators such as site: in this way we can obtain information as varied as the https pages of a domain, the pages that contain certain keywords of a domain, etc…
For example, if I want to know which Amazon secure pages are, you would only have to put site:amazon.com inurl:https
It could also be useful for us to locate domains where we can do link building. If, for example, we are looking for seo blogs, it could be useful to use the search operator allinurl: blog seo With this we would obtain a list of URLs that contain these two keywords and that are related to our theme.
5. cache:
The cache operator: it is used to see the last stored or cached version that Google has of a site. This can be very useful to see what is the latest version that Google has of our website after implementing a series of changes. An example of this would be:
cache:zonanegativa.com
6.intitle:
Shows pages that have all or some of the specified words in the title. It can be interesting for link building, for example, if we want to be shown pages with certain words (as in the previous SEO blog case) or it could also help us to see our competitors. For example, if I want to see pages that have an SEO agency in the title (at least one of these words), I would put the following:
intitle: seo agency
This can also be used with quotes if we want the words to appear as is. This operator if we join it with the site: it could be very interesting to find duplicate titles of a certain website.
7.allintitle:
In this case the allintitle would do what we have mentioned in previous points, we ask it to show us only the search results of pages that contain all the specified words.
8.filetype:
This operator shows us search results of a certain type of file. For example if we wanted to see only search results in PDF we would use the:
filetype:pdf
If we combine it with the site: or with the inurl: it can be very interesting to show us PDF content from a certain domain or that contains certain words in the URL. For example if I want to find local seo guides in PDF I would use.
allinurl:local seo guide filetype:pdf
9. anchor:
This search command shows us search results that contain one or all the words that we specify in the anchor text or link text. An example of this would be
inanchor: tourism agency
It would show results that contain at least one of these words.
10. allinanchor
It has the same function as the previous one but in this case if we put
inanchor:tourism travel agency
It would show results containing all those words.
Both inanchor and allinanchor are very interesting to know, for example, who is .
11.intext
The intext search command returns pages that contain a certain text in the search results. For example if we put
intext:»social media blog»
It would return results of pages that contain this set of words in the body. This can be very interesting to mix with the site command: If I want to know from a certain domain which pages contain the keywords that interest me.
12.info
It shows information that Google has about the domain that interests me. For example if I put
info:elpais.com
Google will offer me to show the cache, similar pages, pages that have a link to this website, etc… In short, it is also an easy way to use the operator functions that we specify here.
So far the most advanced Google commands for SEO. These we emphasize that they have extra potential if we combine them with each other as we have been writing in the article. Among them, perhaps the site command is one of the most powerful. Outside this list, we must not forget other operators that can be used for SEO or for our daily searches. Other basic commands would be:
Minus symbol: –
causes that the search results that are shown to us do not contain the specified word. This minus – can also be applied to all of the above operators. In other words, if I want to see pages that contain a certain text but that do not come from a specific domain, I would put the following:
“text I’m looking for” -site:example.com
OR (Uppercase)
it shows us results that contain one of the two words that we specify. For example, it could be used as:
2014 OR 2018 Olympics venue
~
It shows us variations for a certain search (synonyms, plurals, conjugations, etc.).
Quotation marks
It looks for us the specified text as it is. It is very interesting to meet my competition for example
“translation agencies”
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