Google Search Tips and Tricks

At Google, a syntax is simply a specialized term that, when properly used, can search for your terms within a specific part of a webpage, produce a particular file type, or search only a special collection or specific types of webpages. Google’s syntaxes along with their definitions are:

intitle: / *allintitle : Combining these with search terms will search only for text within the titles of webpages.

inurl: / *allinurl : Combining these with search terms will search only for text within the web address (URL) of webpages.

intext: / *allintext : Combining these with search terms will search only for text within the text of webpages.

inanchor: Combining this with search terms will search only for hyperlinked text within webpages.

site: Combining this with a web address (URL, i.e., http://crossaffairs.blogspot.com/) will search only within the specified site. Additionally, use “site:edu” or “site:gov” to search only within webpages with these extensions (as opposed to .com or .org).

*link: Combining this with a web address (URL) will search only for webpages that link to the
specified site.

cache: Combining this with a web address (URL) will result in the last indexed version of the
specified site (which could be several days, weeks, or months old).

filetype: Combining this with a particular filename extension (i.e., xls for Excel, doc for Word, ppt for PowerPoint) will search only for files of the specified type.

related: Combining this with a web address will produce pages that are similar to the specified
site.

info: Combining this with a web address will produce a link to the website, a link to the cached
version of the site, a link to related pages, a link to a list of pages that link to the site, and
webpages that contain the web address.

*phonebook: Combining this with search terms will provide a list of phone listings for those terms.

Use rphonebook: to search only residential listings and bphonebook : to search only business listings.

daterange: Combining this with a beginning and ending date in Julian format will produce results published only within those dates. For more information about Julian dates and online
converter, visit http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/JulianDate.html.

Some syntaxes can be used in conjunction with one another. Some cannot. Those that can’t are denoted above with an * and are called Antisocial Syntaxes. Google’s Advanced Search feature does not support the mixing of syntaxes or the use of the “site” syntax when used to search specific types of websites (as opposed to a specific site). By far, the most useful syntaxes are: “inanchor,” “site,” “link,” “filetype,” “info,” and “phonebook.”

Using syntaxes. Following are some examples of how to use the syntaxes above. To search for…
George Bush only on the CNN website, enter : “George W. Bush” site:www.cnn.com
Webpages that link to www.in.gov, enter: link:www.in.gov
Nanotechnology only at educational websites, enter: nanotechnology site:edu
An Excel spreadsheet budget template, enter: “budget template” filetype:xls
A phone number for J. Arnold in Ohio, enter: rphonebook:J Arnold OH