Google serves some 80 percent of all search queries on the Internet, making it by far the most popular search engine. Its popularity is due not only to excellent search effectiveness, but also extensive querying capabilities. However, we should also remember that the Internet is a highly dynamic medium, so the results presented by Google are not always up-to-date – some search results might be stale, while other relevant resources might not yet have been visited by Googlebot (the automatic script that browses and indexes Web resources for Google).
Table 1 presents a summary of the most important and most useful query operators along with their descriptions, while Figure 1 shows document locations referred to by the operators when applied to Web searches. Of course, this is just a handful of examples – skilful Google querying can lead to much more interesting results. Hunting for Prey Google makes it possible to reach not just publicly available Internet resources, but also some that should never have been revealed.
Table 1
| Operator |
Description |
Sample query |
| site |
restricts results to sites within the
specified domain |
site:google.com fox will find all sites containing the
word fox, located within the *.google.com domain |
| link |
restricts results to sites containing
links to the specified location |
link:www.google.com will return documents containing
one or more links to www.google.com |
| intitle |
restricts results to documents whose
title contains the specified phrase |
restricts results to documents whose
title contains the specified phrase |
| allintitle |
restricts results to documents
whose title contains all the specified
phrases |
allintitle:fox fire will find all sites with the words fox
and fire in the title, so it's equivalent to intitle:fox
intitle:fire |
| inurl |
restricts results to sites whose URL
contains the specified phrase |
inurl:fox fire will find all sites containing the word fire
in the text and fox in the URL |
| allinurl |
restricts results to sites whose URL
contains all the specified phrases |
allinurl:fox fire will find all sites with the words fox
and fire in the URL, so it's equivalent to inurl:fox
inurl:fire |
| filetype, ext |
restricts results to documents of the
specified type |
filetype:pdf fire will return PDFs containing the word
fire, while filetype:xls fox will return Excel spreadsheets
with the word fox |
| numrange |
restricts results to documents containing
a number from the specified
range |
numrange:1-100 fire will return sites containing a number
from 1 to 100 and the word fire. The same result can be
achieved with 1..100 fire |
| inanchor |
restricts results to sites containing
links with the specified phrase in
their descriptions |
inanchor:fire will return documents with links whose
description contains the word fire (that's the actual link
text, not the URL indicated by the link) |
| allintext |
restricts results to documents containing
the specified phrase in the
text, but not in the title, link descriptions
or URLs |
allintext:"fire fox" will return documents which contain
the phrase fire fox in their text only |
| + |
specifies that a phrase should occur
frequently in results |
+fire will order results by the number of occurrences of
the word fire |
| - |
specifies that a phrase must not occur
in results |
-fire will return documents that don't contain the word
fire |
| "" |
delimiters for entire search phrases
(not single words) |
"fire fox" will return documents containing the phrase
fire fox |
| . |
wildcard for a single character |
fire.fox will return documents containing the phrases
fire fox, fireAfox, fire1fox, fire-fox etc. |
| * |
wildcard for a single word |
fire * fox will return documents containing the phrases
fire the fox, fire in fox, fire or fox etc. |
| | |
logical OR |
"fire fox" | firefox will return documents containing the
phrase fire fox or the word firefox |