Google Advanced Operators

Some of the best features of Google search are the advanced operators. They are a set of commands you can use with your search to specify other attributes. These operators can be used together to narrow down your search even more.

They are one of the lesser known functions in Google so here is a run down of the main ones and how you can use them.

Filetype:
The filetype operator can be used to search for a specific type of file. For example, if you wanted to search for an Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format) file you could search for “filetype:pdf” without the quotes. This search would return a list of PDF files on the internet. If you wanted to narrow this down to PDF files containing the text or on the topic of SEO, you could search for “SEO filetype:pdf”

Site:
The site command is probably the one I use the most. Its main use is to check how many pages a site has indexed in Google. For example, to see all the pages indexed from the Justsearch site we would type “site:www.justsearching.co.uk” – again without the quotes. And using this for a more practical use, you could use it to find all pages relating to SEO on the Justseach website by using the query “site:www.justsearching.co.uk seo”

For a more advanced search, you can use these together. Using the filetype command with the site command we can search an entire website for a specific file type. Using the query “site:www.justsearching.co.uk filetype:pdf” it will return all the PDF files on our site.

Adrian – SEO Programmer