Hereās a Google search operator you may be familiar with.

the āsite:ā operator restricts results to only those from a specified site.
Itās easy to remember most search operators. Theyāre short commands that stick in the mind.
But knowing how to use them effectively is an altogether different story.
Most SEOs know the basics, but few have truly mastered them.
In this post, Iāll share 15 actionable tips to help you master search operators for SEO, which are:
- Find indexation errors
- Find non-secure pages (non-https)
- Find duplicate content issues
- Find unwanted files and pages on your site
- Find guest post opportunities
- Find resource page opportunities
- Find sites that feature infographics⦠so you can pitch YOURS
- Find more link prospects⦠AND check how relevant they are
- Find social profiles for outreach prospects
- Find internal linking opportunities
- Find PR opportunities by finding competitor mentions
- Find sponsored post opportunities
- Find Q+A threads related to your content
- Find how often your competitors are publishing new content
- Find sites linking to competitors
But first, hereās a complete list of all Google search operators and their functionality.
Google Search Operators: The Complete List
Did you know that Google is constantly killing useful operators?
Thatās why most existing lists of Google search operators are outdated and inaccurate.
For this post, I personally tested EVERY search operator I could find.
Here is a complete list of all working, non-working, and āhit and missā Google advanced search operators as of 2018.
āsearch termā
Force an exact-match search. Use this to refine results for ambiguous searches, or to exclude synonyms when searching for single words.
Example: āsteve jobsā
OR
Search for X or Y. This will return results related to X or Y, or both. Note: The pipe (|) operator can also be used in place of āOR.ā
Examples: jobs OR gates / jobs | gates
AND
Search for X and Y. This will return only results related to both X and Y. Note: It doesnāt really make much difference for regular searches, as Google defaults to āANDā anyway. But itās very useful when paired with other operators.
Example: jobs AND gates
-
Exclude a term or phrase. In our example, any pages returned will be related to jobs but not Apple (the company).
Example: jobs -apple
*
Acts as a wildcard and will match any word or phrase.
Example: steve * apple
( )
Group multiple terms or search operators to control how the search is executed.
Example: (ipad OR iphone) apple
$
Search for prices. Also works for Euro (ā¬), but not GBP (Ā£) š
Example: ipad $329
define:
A dictionary built into Google, basically. This will display the meaning of a word in a card-like result in the SERPs.
Example: define:entrepreneur
cache:
Returns the most recent cached version of a web page (providing the page is indexed, of course).
Example: cache:apple.com
filetype:
Restrict results to those of a certain filetype. E.g., PDF, DOCX, TXT, PPT, etc. Note: The āext:ā operator can also be usedāthe results are identical.
Example: apple filetype:pdf / apple ext:pdf
site:
Limit results to those from a specific website.
Example: site:apple.com
related:
Find sites related to a given domain.
Example: related:apple.com
intitle:
Find pages with a certain word (or words) in the title. In our example, any results containing the word āappleā in the title tag will be returned.
Example: intitle:apple
allintitle:
Similar to āintitle,ā but only results containing all of the specified words in the title tag will be returned.
Example: allintitle:apple iphone
inurl:
Find pages with a certain word (or words) in the URL. For this example, any results containing the word āappleā in the URL will be returned.
Example: inurl:apple
allinurl:
Similar to āinurl,ā but only results containing all of the specified words in the URL will be returned.
Example: allinurl:apple iphone
intext:
Find pages containing a certain word (or words) somewhere in the content. For this example, any results containing the word āappleā in the page content will be returned.
Example: intext:apple
allintext:
Similar to āintext,ā but only results containing all of the specified words somewhere on the page will be returned.
Example: allintext:apple iphone
AROUND(X)
Proximity search. Find pages containing two words or phrases within X words of each other. For this example, the words āappleā and āiphoneā must be present in the content and no further than four words apart.
Example: apple AROUND(4) iphone
weather:
Find the weather for a specific location. This is displayed in a weather snippet, but it also returns results from other āweatherā websites.
Example: weather:san francisco
stocks:
See stock information (i.e., price, etc.) for a specific ticker.
Example: stocks:aapl
map:
Force Google to show map results for a locational search.
Example: map:silicon valley
movie:
Find information about a specific movie. Also finds movie showtimes if the movie is currently showing near you.
Example: movie:steve jobs
in
Convert one unit to another. Works with currencies, weights, temperatures, etc.
Example: $329 in GBP
source:
Find news results from a certain source in Google News.
Example: apple source:the_verge
_
Not exactly a search operator, but acts as a wildcard for Google Autocomplete.
Example: apple CEO _ jobs
Here are the ones that are hit and miss, according to my testing:
#..#
Search for a range of numbers. In the example below, searches related to āWWDC videosā are returned for the years 2010-2014, but not for 2015 and beyond.
Example: wwdc video 2010..2014
inanchor:
Find pages that are being linked to with specific anchor text. For this example, any results with inbound links containing either āappleā or āiphoneā in the anchor text will be returned.
Example: inanchor:apple iphone
allinanchor:
Similar to āinanchor,ā but only results containing all of the specified words in the inbound anchor text will be returned.
Example: allinanchor:apple iphone
blogurl:
Find blog URLs under a specific domain. This was used in Google blog search, but Iāve found it does return some results in regular search.
Example: blogurl:microsoft.com
loc:placename
Find results from a given area.
Example: loc:āsan franciscoā apple
location:
Find news from a certain location in Google News.
Example: loc:āsan franciscoā apple
Here are the Google search operators that have been discontinued and no longer work. š
+
Force an exact-match search on a single word or phrase.
Example: jobs +apple
~
Include synonyms. Doesnāt work, because Google now includes synonyms by default. (Hint: Use double quotes to exclude synonyms.)
Example: ~apple
inpostauthor:
Find blog posts written by a specific author. This only worked in Google Blog search, not regular Google search.
Example: inpostauthor:āsteve jobsā
allinpostauthor:
Similar to āinpostauthor,ā but removes the need for quotes (if you want to search for a specific author, including surname.)
Example: allinpostauthor:steve jobs
inposttitle:
Find blog posts with specific words in the title. No longer works, as this operator was unique to the discontinued Google blog search.
Example: intitle:apple iphone
link:
Find pages linking to a specific domain or URL. Google killed this operator in 2017, but it does still show some resultsāthey likely arenāt particularly accurate though. (Deprecated in 2017)
Example: link:apple.com
info:
Find information about a specific page, including the most recent cache, similar pages, etc. (Deprecated in 2017). Note: The id:
operator can also be usedāthe results are identical.
Example: info:apple.com / id:apple.com
daterange:
Find results from a certain date range. Uses the Julian date format, for some reason.
Example: daterange:11278-13278
phonebook:
Find someoneās phone number. (Deprecated in 2010)
Example: phonebook:tim cook
#
Searches #hashtags. Introduced for Google+; now deprecated.
Example: #apple
15 Actionable Ways to Use Google Search Operators
Now letās tackle a few ways to put these operators into action.
My aim here is to show that you can achieve almost anything with Google advanced operators if you know how to use and combine them efficiently.
So donāt be afraid to play around and deviate from the examples below. You might just discover something new.
Check out 9 actionable Google search operator tips in Sam Ohās video.
Letās go!
1. Find indexation errors
Google indexation errors exist for most sites.
It could be that a page that should be indexed, isnāt. Or vice-versa.
Letās use the site:
operator to see how many pages Google has indexed for ahrefs.com.
~1,040.
But how many of these pages are blog posts?
Letās find out.
~249. Thatās roughly ¼.
I know Ahrefs blog inside out, so I know this is higher than the number of posts we have.
Letās investigate further.
OK, so it seems that a few odd pages are being indexed.
(This page isnāt even liveāitās a 404)
Such pages should be removed from the SERPs by noindexing them.
Letās also narrow the search to subdomains and see what we find.
~731 results.
Hereās a page residing on a subdomain that definitely shouldnāt be indexed. It gives a 404 error for a start.
Here are a few other ways to uncover indexation errors with Google operators:
site:yourblog.com/category
- find WordPress blog category pages;site:yourblog.com inurl:tag
- find WordPress ātagā pages.
2. Find non-secure pages (non-https)
HTTPs is a must these days, especially for ecommerce sites.
But did you know that you can find unsecure pages with the site:
operator?
Letās try it for asos.com.
Oh my, ~2.47M unsecure pages.
It looks like ASOS donāt currently use SSLāunbelievable for such a large site.
But hereās another crazy thing:
ASOS is accessible at both the https and http versions.
And we learned all that from a simple site:
search!
3. Find duplicate content issues
Duplicate content = bad.
Hereās a pair of Abercrombie and Fitch jeans from ASOS with this brand description:
With third-party brand descriptions like this, theyāre often duplicated on other sites.
But first, Iām wondering how many times this copy appears on asos.com.
~4.2K.
Now Iām wondering if this copy is even unique to ASOS.
Letās check.
No, it isnāt.
Thatās 15 other sites with this exact same copyāi.e., duplicate content.
Sometimes duplicate content issues can arise from similar product pages, too.
For example, similar or identical products with different quantity counts.
Hereās an example from ASOS:
You can see thatāquantities asideāall of these product pages are the same.
But duplicate content isnāt only a problem for ecommerce sites.
If you have a blog, then people could be stealing and republishing your content without attribution.
Letās see if anyone has stolen and republished our list of SEO tips.
~17 results.
Most of these are probably syndicated content.
Still, itās worth checking these out to make sure that they do link back to you.
Recommended reading: Duplicate Content: Why It Happens and How to Fix It
Content Explorer > In title > enter the title of your page/post > exclude your own site
You will then see any pages (from our database of 900M+ pieces of content) with the same title as your page/post.
In this instance, there are 5 results.
Next, enter your domain under āHighlight unlinked domains.ā
This will highlight any sites that donāt link back to you.
You can then reach out to those sites and request the addition of a source link.
FYI, this filter actually looks for links on a domain-level rather than a page-level. It is, therefore, possible that the site could be linking to you from another page, rather than the page in question.
4. Find odd files on your domain (that you may have forgotten about)
Keeping track of everything on your website can be difficult.
(This is especially true for big sites.)
For this reason, itās easy to forget about old files you may have uploaded.
PDF files; Word documents; Powerpoint presentations; text files; etc.
Letās use the filetype:
operator to check for these on ahrefs.com.
ext:
operatorāit does the same thing.Hereās one of those files:
Iāve never seen that piece of content before. Have you?
But we can extend this further than just PDF files.
By combining a few operators, itās possible to return results for all supported file types at once.
Itās important to delete or noindex these if youād prefer people didnāt come across them.
5. Find guest post opportunities
Guest post opportunities⦠there are TONS of ways to find them, such as:
But you already knew about that method, right!? š
So letās get more creative.
First off: donāt limit yourself to āwrite for us.ā
You can also use:
ābecome a contributor"
ācontribute toā
āwrite for meā
(yepāthere are solo bloggers seeking guest posts, too!)āguest post guidelinesā
inurl:guest-post
inurl:guest-contributor-guidelines
- etc.
But hereās a cool tip most people miss:
You can search for many of these at once.
You can even search for multiple footprints AND multiple keywords.
Looking for opportunities in a specific country?
Just add a site:.tld
operator.
Hereās another method:
If you know of a serial guest blogger in your niche, try this:
This will find every site that person has written for.
Content Explorer > author search > exclude their site(s)
For this example, letās use our very own Tim Soulo.
BOOM. 17 results. All of which are probably guest posts.
For reference, hereās the exact search I entered into Content Explorer:
author:ātim souloā -site:ahrefs.com -site:bloggerjet.com
Basically, this searches for posts by Tim Soulo. But it also excludes posts from ahrefs.com and bloggerjet.com (Timās personal blog).
Note. Sometimes you will find a few false positives in there. It depends on how common the persons name happens to be.
But donāt stop there:
You can also use Content Explorer to find sites in your niche that have never linked to you.
Content Explorer > enter a topic > one article per domain > highlight unlinked domains
Hereās one of the unlinked domains I found for ahrefs.com:
This means marketingprofs.com has never linked to us.
Now, this search doesnāt tell us whether or not they have a āwrite for usā page. But it doesnāt really matter. The truth is that most sites are usually happy to accept guest posts if you can offer them āqualityā content. It would, therefore, definitely be worth reaching out and āpitchingā such sites.
Another benefit of using Content Explorer is that you can see stats for each page, including:
- # of RDs;
- DR;
- Organic traffic estimation;
- Social shares;
- Etc.
You can also export the results easily. š
Recommended reading: Guest Blogging for SEO: How to Build High-quality Links at Scale
Finally, if youāre wondering whether a specific site accepts guest posts or not, try this:
6. Find resource page opportunities
āResourceā pages round-up the best resources on a topic.
Hereās what a so-called āresourceā page looks like:
All of those links you see = links to resources on other sites.
(Ironicallyāgiven the subject nature of that particular pageāa lot of those links are broken)
So if you have a cool resource on your site, you can:
- find relevant āresourceā pages;
- pitch your resource for inclusion
Hereās one way to find them:
But that can return a lot of junk.
Hereās a cool way to narrow it down:
Or narrow it down even further with:
allintitle:
here ensures that the title tag contains the words āfitnessā AND āresources,ā and also a number between 5-15.Recommended reading: Resource Page Link Building: The Only Guide You Need
I know what youāre thinking:
Why not use the #..#
operator instead of that long sequence of numbers.
Good point!
Letās try it:
Confused? Hereās the deal:
This operator doesnāt play nicely with most other operators.
Nor does it seem to work a lot of the time anywayāitās definitely hit and miss.
So I recommend using a sequence of numbers separated by āORā or the pipe (ā|ā) operator.
Itās a bit of a hassle, but it works.
7. Find sites that feature infographics⦠so you can pitch YOURS
Infographics get a bad rap.
Most likely, this is because a lot of people create low-quality, cheap infographics that serve no real purpose⦠other than to āattract links.ā
But infographics arenāt always bad.
Hereās the general strategy for infographics:
- create infographic
- pitch infographic
- get featured, get link (and PR!)
But who should you pitch your infographic to?
Just any old sites in your niche?
NO.
You should pitch to sites that are actually likely to want to feature your infographic.
The best way to do this is to find sites that have featured infographics before.
Hereās how:
But again, this can kick back some serious junk.
So hereās a quick trick:
- use the above search to find a good, relevant infographic (i.e., well-designed, etc.)
- search for that specific infographic
Hereās an example:
This found ~2 results from the last 3 months. And 450+ all-time results.
Do this for a handful of infographics and youāll have a good list of prospects.
Have you ever noticed that when an infographic is embedded on a site, the site owner will usually include the word āinfographicā in square brackets in the title tag?
Example:
Unfortunately, Google search ignores square brackets (even if theyāre in quotes).
But Content Explorer doesnāt.
Content Explorer > search query > āAND [infographic]ā
As you can see, you can also use advanced operators in CE to search for multiple terms at once. The search above finds results containing āSEO,ā ākeyword research,ā or ālink buildingā in the title tag, plus ā[infographic].ā
You can export these easily (with all associated metrics), too.
8. Find more link prospects⦠AND check how relevant they really are
Letās assume youāve found a site that you want a link from.
Itās been manually vetted for relevance⦠and all looks good.
Hereās how to find a list of similar sites or pages:
This returned ~49 resultsāall of which were similar sites.
Hereās one of the results: yoast.com/seo-blog
Iām quite familiar with Yoast, so I know itās a relevant site/prospect.
But letās assume that I know nothing about this site, how could I quickly vet this prospect?
Hereās how:
- do a
site:domain.com
search, and note down the number of results; - do a
site:domain.com [niche]
search, then also note down the number of results; - divide the second number by the firstāif itās above 0.5, itās a good, relevant prospect; if itās above 0.75, itās a super-relevant prospect.
Letās try this with yoast.com.
Hereās the number of results for a simple site:
search:
And site: [niche]
:
So thatās 3,330 / 3,950 = ~0.84.
(Remember, >0.75 translates to a very relevant prospect, usually)
Now letās try the same for a site that I know to be irrelevant: greatist.com.
Number of results for site:greatist.com
search: ~18,000
Number of results for site:greatist.com SEO
search: ~7
(7 / 18,000 = ~0.0004 = a totally irrelevant site)
IMPORTANT! This is a great way to quick eliminate highly-irrelevant tactics, but itās not foolproofāyou will sometimes get strange or unenlightening results. I also want to stress that itās certainly no replacement for manually checking a potential prospectās website. You should ALWAYS thoroughly check a prospects site before reaching out to them. Failure to do that = SPAMMING.
Site Explorer > relevant domain > Competing Domains
For example, letās assume I was looking for more SEO-related link prospects.
I could enter ahrefs.com/blog into Site Explorer.
Then check the Competing Domains.
This will reveal domains competing for the same keywords.
9. Find social profiles for outreach prospects
Got someone in mind that you want to reach out to?
Try this trick to find their contact details:
Here are the top 4 results:
BINGO.
You can then contact them directly via social media.
Or use some of the tips from steps #4 and #6 in this article to hunt down an email address.
10. Find internal linking opportunities
Internal links are important.
They help visitors to find their way around your site.
And they also bring SEO benefits (when used wisely).
But you need to make sure that youāre ONLY adding internal links where relevant.
Letās say that you just published a big list of SEO tips.
Wouldnāt it be cool to add an internal link to that post from any other posts where you talk about SEO tips?
Definitely.
Itās just that finding relevant places to add such links can be difficultāespecially with big sites.
So hereās a quick trick:
For those of you who still havenāt gotten the hang of search operators, hereās what this does:
- Restricts the search to a specific site;
- Excludes the page/post that you want to build internal links to;
- Looks for a certain word or phrase in the text.
Hereās one opportunity I found with this operator:
It took me all of ~3 seconds to find this. š
11. Find PR opportunities by finding competitor mentions
Hereās a page that mentions a competitor of oursāMoz.
Found using this advanced search:
But why no mention of Ahrefs? š
Using site:
and intext:
, I can see that this site has mentioned us a couple of times before.
But they havenāt written any posts dedicated to our toolset, as they have with Moz.
This presents an opportunity.
Reach out, build a relationship, then perhaps they may write about Ahrefs.
Hereās another cool search that can be used to find competitor reviews:
You can build relationships with these people and get them to review your product/service too.
You can also use the āIn titleā search in Content Explorer to find competitor reviews.
I tried this for Ahrefs and found 795 results.
For clarity, hereās the exact search I used:
review AND (moz OR semrush OR majestic) -site:moz.com -site:semrush.com -site:majestic.com
But you can go even further by highlighting unlinked mentions.
This highlights the sites that have never linked to you before, so you can then prioritise them.
Hereās one site that has never linked to Ahrefs, yet has reviewed our competitor:
You can see that itās a Domain Rating (DR) 79 website, so it would be well worth getting a mention on this site.
Hereās another cool tip:
Googleās daterange:
operator is now deprecated. But you can still add a time period filter to find recent competitor mentions.
Just use the inbuilt filter.
Tools > Any time > select time period
Looks like ~34 reviews of our competitors were published in the past month.
Recommended reading: 9 Great Public Relations Tactics with Campaign Examples
Alerts > Mentions > Add alert
Enter the name of your competitor⦠or any search query you like.
Choose a mode (either āin titleā or āeverywhereā), add your blocked domains, then add a recipient.
Set your internal to real-time (or whatever interval you prefer).
Hit āSave.ā
You will now receive an email whenever your competitors are mentioned online.
12. Find sponsored post opportunities
Sponsored posts are paid-for posts promoting your brand, product or service.
These are NOT link building opportunities.
Googleās guidelines states the following;
Buying or selling links that pass PageRank. This includes exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links; exchanging goods or services for links; or sending someone a āfreeā product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link
This is why you should ALWAYS nofollow links in sponsored posts.
But the true value of a sponsored post doesnāt come down to links anyway.
It comes down to PRāi.e., getting your brand in front of the right people.
Hereās one way to find sponsored post opportunities using Google search operators:
~151 results. Not bad.
Here are a few other operator combinations to use:
[niche] intext:āthis is a sponsored post byā
[niche] intext:āthis post was sponsored byā
[niche] intitle:āsponsored postā
[niche] intitle:āsponsored post archivesā inurl:ācategory/sponsored-postā
āsponsoredā AROUND(3) āpostā
Use this Chrome bookmarklet to extract the Google search results.
Batch Analysis > paste the URLs > select ādomain/*ā mode > sort by organic search traffic
Now you have a list of the sites with the most traffic, which are usually the best opportunities.
13. Find Q+A threads related to your content
Forums and Q+A sites are great for promoting content.
One site that comes to mind is Quora.
Quora allow you to drop relevant links throughout your answers.

an answer on Quora with a link to an SEO blog.
Itās true that these links are nofollowed.
But weāre not trying to build links hereāthis is about PR!
Hereās one way to find relevant threads:
Donāt limit yourself to Quora, though.
This can be done with any forum or Q+A site.
Hereās the same search for Warrior Forum:
I also know that Warrior Forum has a search engine optimization category.
Every thread in this category has ā.com/search-engine-optimization/ā in the URL.
So I could refine my search even further with the inurl: operator.
Iāve found that using search operators like this allows you to search forum threads with more granularity than most on-site searches.
Site Explorer > quora.com > Organic Keywords > search for a niche-relevant keyword
You should now see relevant Quora threads sorted by estimated monthly organic traffic.
Answering such threads can lead to a nice trickle of referral traffic.
14. Find how often your competitors are publishing new content
Most blogs reside in a subfolder or on a subdomain.
Examples:
- ahrefs.com/blog
- blog.hubspot.com
- blog.kissmetrics.com
This makes it easy to check how regularly competitors are publishing new content.
Letās try this for one of our competitorsāSEMrush.
Looks like they have ~4.5K blog posts.
But this isnāt accurate. It includes multi-language versions of the blog, which reside on subdomains.
Letās filter these out.
Thatās more like it. ~2.2K blog posts.
Now we know our competitor (SEMrush) has ~2.2K blog posts in total.
Letās see how many they published in the last month.
Because the daterange:
operator no longer works, weāll instead use Googleās inbuilt filter.
Tools > Any time > select time period
~29 blog posts. Interesting.
FYI, thatās ~4x faster than we publish new posts. And they have ~15X more posts than us in total.
But we still get more traffic⦠with ~2x the value, might I add š
Quality over quantity, right!?
You can also use the site:
operator combined with a search query to see how much content a competitor has published on a certain topic.
15. Find sites linking to competitors
Competitors getting links?
What if you could also have them?
Googleās link:
operator was officially deprecated in 2017.
But Iāve found that it does still return some results.
~900K links.
Googleās data is heavily sampled.
It likely isnāt too accurate either.
Site Explorer can provide a much fuller picture of your competitorās backlink profile.
~1.5 million backlinks.
Thatās a lot more than Google showed us.
This is yet another instance where the time period filter can be useful.
Filtering by the last month, I can see that Moz has gained 18K+ new backlinks.
Pretty useful. But this also illustrates how inaccurate this data can be.
Site Explorer picked up 35K+ links for this same period.
Thatās almost DOUBLE!
Final Thoughts
Google advanced search operators are insanely powerful.
You just have to know how to use them.
But I have to admit that some are more useful than others, especially when it comes to SEO. I find myself using site:
, intitle:
, intext:
, and inurl:
on an almost daily basis. Yet I rarely use AROUND(X)
, allintitle:
, and many of the other more obscure operators.
Iād also add that many operators are borderline useless unless paired with another operator⦠or two, or three.
So do play around with them and let me know what you come up with.
Iād be more than happy to add any useful combinations you discover to the post. š