Google's Advanced Search Syntax

by Paul Myers
@paulmyersbbc

 

" "

ensures keywords appear together

 Example: John Major without quotes
versus  John Major with quotes

-

removes pages with  specified keywords

Example: Crime in York - minus the results for "New York"
site: finds pages from a specified domain Example: a search on the Volkswagen site vs. Google
OR allows various possible keywords in a search Example: searching for crime and various UK cities on Facebook
AROUND(x) finds terms placed within x words of each other Example: Trump within 3 words of Merkel
ext: finds PDF, PPT, XLS, CSV & DOC files Example: UK government documents in PDF format
... allows you to specify a range of numbers Example: Hamburg in the 1950's
intitle: finds keywords in the title of a page Example: London protests on Facebook
inurl: finds words in web addresses Example: searching UK Police FOI sites