As a premier search engine, Google matches web pages to your search terms accurately and efficiently. It can return millions of results in less than a second.
Sometimes, users need to filter through thousands of SERPs for the information they need. Google has since offered search operators to help users narrow down their search results.
Search operators are a type of advanced search method. You can use search operators to filter your search results by title, file type, and more.
What is a Site Search?
A site search involves using Google to search through one domain. When you perform a site search, you instruct Google to return results from one website, not the entire Internet.
To perform a site search, add ‘site:’ in front of the URL of the site you want to search (“site: www.domain.com.”)
Site search is a type of search operator. Search operators are helpful for general users and experienced search marketers.
Types Of Search Operators
- Query Search: To perform a query search, print your query in quotation marks (e.g., “your query.”) Google will only show pages that contain the exact match of your query.
- Negative Query Search: A negative query search does the opposite of a query search. You should precede your query with a “–” to remove your query from the search results (“-your query.”) Google will filter out any search result that contains your negative query.
- AND Search: Adding “AND” in between two queries will narrow down your search results to pages where both of your queries appear.
- OR Search: Adding “OR” between two queries will expand your search results to include results where either of your queries appears.
- Site Search: A site search only displays results from one particular website.
- URL Search: A URL search filters for pages where your query appears in the URL. You will need to add ‘inurl:’ in front of your query to do this search.
- Title Search: Title search refines your search results to pages where your query appears in the page title. You will need to add ‘intitle:’ in front of your query.
- File Type Search: Adding ‘filetype:’ in front of your query will display results only in the type of file specified.
- Related Search: A related search will return results that are related to your query. This query can be a keyword or website.
- Author Search: You can narrow your search results to those written by a specific author using the author search. You will need to add ‘inpostauthor:’ in front of your query.
You can combine multiple operators to modify your results further.
Reasons to do a Site Search
You can use search operators to:
- Perform Competitor Research: Use site searches to navigate your competitor’s URLs with ease. Filter for specific keywords in the webpage content or title. Review your competitor’s blog for particular topics, new product releases, and other helpful information.
- Find Related Content: Site searches can identify existing content to reference in blog posts or web content. Combine site searches with query searches to find pages on an authoritative website referencing a blog topic you’re writing.
- Find Content On Your Site: You can run a site search on your domain to finding older related content you can reference or refresh. If your website or blog is extensive, a site search is perfect for filtering through older content fast.
How to do a Site Search On Google?
Site searches require a simple modification to a standard Google search.
