TOP 10 best operators for search in Google
As a rule, people can easily find the information they need on Google. Nevertheless, there are also such cases when you can drive a ton of queries into a search engine, but still not get the desired answer. Do not despair! In today’s article, we will introduce you to the top ten most useful Google operators for better search.
Table of Contents
TOP 10 Operators for Google Search
With the help of the so-called Google operators, you can:
- get results sorted by date and time;
- specify a specific file type when searching;
- get search results for one specific website;
- force the search engine to find an exact match with the request;
- view cached data;
- find web pages with a specific word in their title (title);
- find web pages with a specific word in their URL;
- find a map of a particular area;
- find a result for a specific area;
- exclude the term from the search query.
Now we will take a look at the operator for each of the above possibilities. Trust me, once you learn how to use Google’s operators, life will become much easier. So let’s go in order …
Sort by date and time
If you are trying to find news or just want to find material that was published in a specific time frame, then you should definitely use this operator. Fortunately, you do not need to write anything in the address / search bar, because in the Google search engine you can already find the corresponding option.
To get started, try to drive any search query (whatever – it doesn’t matter) into Google, and then click on the “Tools” button. Then click on the drop-down menu “For all time” and select the time period you need, for example, for a week or for a month. In addition, you can even set the exact time period you want to get results, which is incredibly convenient.
File type / extension selection
If you are studying a subject on the Internet and you need to find a book in PDF format, you can apply the following convenient operator to your search query:
KEYWORD filetype: FILE EXPANSION.
Let’s say you want to download a book on world history in PDF format. To find such a useful book, you need to enter the following query into a search engine:
World history filetype: PDF
Very simple and very helpful. Of course, you can change the type of the file you are looking for to any other, for example, EXE, BAT, and others.
Site-specific search results
Let’s imagine that you wanted to check the information from a long-standing news item on some informational website. Unfortunately, the search engine of this site is temporarily out of order – what to do in such a situation? The answer is to use the site operator.
KEYWORD site: WEBSITE
Let’s look at a small example:
Windows 7 site: gamesqa.ru
After completing such a search query, you will see all the articles on our site on the topic of Windows 7. Tired of using slow search forms? Replace them with such an elementary Google operator.
Forced exact matches
Sometimes we can spend hours digging in a search engine, but never find what we needed. It seems that we are entering a suitable query, but everything is in vain. In this case, you need to use the operator “”, thanks to which Google will make a forced search for an exact match with your request.
“KEYWORD”
Simply put, it is enough to highlight the search query with quotes on the sides and Google will try to give you exact matches for this query. For example, if you want to know the addresses of CSN stores in Moscow:
“CSN Moscow address”
Cache versions of websites
Has your favorite site temporarily stopped working? Not a problem: you can view its cache version.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:URL
As an example, we use our website:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gamesqa.ru
Pages with a specific word in the title
The intitle operator is very useful when looking for news about some specific events, for example, about the release of a new gadget or about the actions of a certain politician. This operator looks like this:
intitle: KEYWORD
Looking for the latest information on the new iPhone 12? Then you need to drive into the search engine:
intitle: iPhone 12
Pages with a specific word in the URL
The same function as the previous operator, but the word is searched not in the title (title) of the page, but in its URL. This operator is somewhat more difficult to use, because the URL usually contains clear keywords, i.e. it may take two or three tries.
inurl: KEYWORD
Let’s say you need to find articles for the update KB3216755 for the Windows 10 operating system. Such a request would look like this:
inurl: kb3216755
Search for maps of the area
True, in Google Maps you can find a highly detailed map of almost any location on this planet, however, you can see a small preview of the map directly in the search engine itself. All you have to do is use the map operator.
map: LOCATION
Need a map of Moscow? To find this card, you will need to request the following:
map: Moscow
Just click LMB on the found map to instantly go to Google Maps and look at a more detailed version of the map.
Terrain Results
Sometimes you may need information that is relevant only for a specific area, city, region, etc. etc. To get the information you need, you should use the location operator. It looks like this:
KEYWORD location: LOCATION
Suppose you want to look at the average salary in your city, but you get all sorts of unnecessary nonsense from regular search queries. In this case, you need to drive in the following request:
average salary location: Moscow
Excluding a term from a search query
Let’s imagine that you are trying to get results for a keyword that is very often mentioned with a certain word, but you do not want to get results with the mention of this word. How to proceed? In this situation, users can use the -exclusion operator.
EXCLUSION KEYWORD
You want to buy food for your pet, say, a cat, from one of the online pet stores, and you need to exclude all dog food pages from the results. The following is worth trying:
buy food for cats and dogs
As you can see, using Google’s carriers is not only easy but also extremely rewarding. Of course, there are many more operators performing other functions in the Google search engine, but we showed you the most useful ones, which will definitely be useful to every ordinary user of the World Wide Web.
