Search engines are primarily used to find the information you need, but given the amount of information Google returns after you enter a query, finding precise and relevant information on the first attempt is not always easy. To simplify tasks like this, there are search operators that help make a query more precise and produce targeted results.
Search operators are a set of commands that narrow a search query according to specific criteria. They can also be combined to obtain even more accurate results. Search operators are useful for many professionals, including SEO specialists, whom they help with on-page and off-page website optimisation, and recruiters, whom they help with Boolean and X-Ray searches on a specific website.
In this article, we will look at the available search operators, how they work, their benefits, and examples of how to use them.
List of Google Search Operators
First, let’s look at which search operators are available and what they are used for:
| Operator | Example | What it does |
| Plus (+) | buy a refrigerator +zhytomyr | Shows search results for the query “buy a refrigerator,” but only pages containing the word “Zhytomyr.” |
| Minus (-) | jaguar speed -car | Similar to the plus operator, but excludes the word following the minus symbol. |
| Quotation marks “” | “developed mobile apps” | Performs an exact search for the query exactly as it appears inside the quotation marks. |
| OR | vacancies OR jobs | Performs a search and displays results containing X or Y. |
| AND | car AND tableware | Shows only results containing both X and Y. |
| site: | site:https://uk.wikipedia.org/ | Shows results only from the specified website. |
| intitle: | intitle:junior seo specialist | Shows results whose title tag contains the specified words. |
| allintitle: | allintitle:junior seo specialist | Shows results whose title tag contains the words in the exact specified order. |
| inurl: | inurl:seo kyiv | Shows results whose URLs contain the specified words. |
| allinurl: | allinurl:kyiv-seo | Shows results whose URLs contain the words in the exact specified order. |
| intext: | buy a car intext:marketplace | Shows results containing the specified word in the page text. |
| allintext: | allintext:resume arbitrage kyiv junior | Shows results containing all specified words in the page text. |
| filetype: | design proposal filetype:pdf | Shows documents in the specified format that contain the given query. |
| related: | related:https://rozetka.com.ua/ | Finds results related by topic to the specified page. |
| blogurl: | blogurl:microsoft.com | Makes it possible to find the blog section on the specified website. |
| link: | link:https://bt.rozetka.com.ua/refrigerators/c80125/ | Finds pages that link to the specified URL. |
Useful Examples of Using Search Operators
Below are several useful examples of how to use search operators:
Suppose you need to find a Python programming tutorial that you can download for free. You can use the allintitle: search operator for this:
allintitle:python tutorial
If you need to find a vacancy on rabota.ua for a position requiring SEO skills and offering foreign language courses, the following combination of operators will work:
foreign language courses intitle:seo vacancy site:rabota.ua
If you need to find pages for white or green curtains on rozetka.ua, you can use the following operator:
(white OR green) curtains site:https://rozetka.com.ua/Note: parentheses are used to group the OR search operator so that it searches for either white or green curtains.
Suppose you need to find résumés in PDF, DOC, or DOCX format for a Frontend Developer position on work.ua. The following combination of search queries is suitable:
(intitle:resume OR CV) (filetype:pdf OR doc OR docx) "Frontend Developer” site:work.ua
Conclusion
As I wrote above, search operators are a very useful tool. They are useful not only in the work of an SEO specialist: they cover a wide range of needs for professionals in different fields and ordinary users who are looking for the information they need. The only thing required to master them is practice. Once you learn the language of search operators, you will be able to find the information you need in search engines and on websites that interest you with a single Google query.
