The Great Google Search Guide can help you to improve your search results and SERP analysis with less-known search Tips

First Things First

In this Google guide I’ll show you some less-known google operators and search tips. Please note that since this advanced operators are sometimes used by spam-bot, black hat seos and other people google does not loves, you may bump in 403-Access denied screens.

Things to Know

• google is not case sensitive: searching for doughnut is the same as DoughNuT
• search operators are case sensitive: searching for doughnuts OR donuts uses OR as the google operator, while doughnuts or donuts does not.
• google default is to search for pages that include all of your search terms. Also the order of your search term is somehow relevant.
• google excludes common words (also called stop words) like “I” , “the” etc.
• some operators can be combined, while others must be used alone.

Try a trick here.

Basic Operators

+

forces words to be included in search results. Useful with stop words that otherwise will be discarded

-

prevents a search term to show in results, for example searching for doughnut -cream can help you to avoid creamy doughnuts try this

OR

returns documents with one of the given terms, like doughnut OR donut. You can also use | instead of OR: doughnut | donut try this

” “

using quotes forces google to search for the exact phrase (including stop words), try “doughnut at midnight” and doughnut at midnight (actually, using quotes is similar, but not equals, to doughnut-at-midnight … it would be interesting to know what is the exact difference in SERP) try this

~

allow to search also for synonyms of the given word. searching for doughnut ~tips finds also pages with the word help or guide etc. try this

*

means every word. try “doughnuts with *” try this

..

Used to search in a range of numbers, “2..20 doughnuts” will find pages containing “I eat 3 doughnuts a day” and “I’ll never eat more than 15 doughnuts in a month” try this

This operators can be combined to create advanced queries, for example “I eat 1..100 doughnut OR doughnuts OR donut OR donuts each *” try this

Advanced google operators

daterange:

Returns documents modified in the given time interval. Dates should be entered in julian format (so geeky, but a bit unusable).
Using doughnuts daterange:2454091-2454101 you can find who talked about doughnuts in the last ten days of 2006  try this

filetype:

returns links to documents with the given file type.
For example searching for doughnuts filetype:java will find portable and object-oriented doughnuts. try this

Currently officially supported file types are pdf, ps, wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku, lwp, mw, xls, ppt, doc, wks, wps, wdb, wri, rtf, swf, ans, txt, but other are supported as well, like xml, cpp, java etc.

site:

restricts the results to the given domain. site:ruchitsurati.net will find all indexed page on www.ruchitsurati.net, while site:ruchitsurati.net doughnuts will find all doughnuts-related pages on www.ruchitsurati.net. try this

update: you can use the site operator also to find your supplemental results using this query: site:www.ruchitsurati.net *** -sljktf. (taken from an intresting article about Google Supplemental Index Results by Aaron Wall)

cache:

shows the cached version of given webpage. Other words in the query will be highlighted in the returned page, try cache:www.ruchitsurati.net doughnuts

link:

lists webpages that link to the given webpage. link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doughnut will list webpages with links pointing to wikipedia’s voice for Doughnut try this

related:

returns pages that google somehow thiks are related to the given page. Not always accurate. try this

info:

returns some informations about the given web page. Typically website and description. try this

define:

returns the definition of a given word. Try define:doughnuts (in case you are an alien and you don’t know what a Doughnut is :) ) try this

phonebook:

search in residential phone book. sample: phonebook:smith Los Angeles try this

stoks:

returns stock info: try stocks:goog try this

weather:

weather informations for the given city. weather:los angeles try this

movie:

returns all movies related to the search term given. Sample: movie:doughnuts
You can also find movies by locations: movie:nyc , movie 10015 try this

flights

you can search for flights inside USA using the airport code (does not work for every airport). sample: jfk lax try this

SEO-oriented Operators

allintitle:

Search for documents with the given words in their title. allintitle:doughnuts chocolate will find all the documents with title containing ‘doughnuts’ and ‘chocolate’. This operator cannot be combined with others. try this

intitle:

Search for documents with the first word after the intitle operator in their title. intitle:doughnuts chocolate will find all the documents with title containing ‘doughnuts’ and talking about chocolate. Note that the word ‘chocolate’ is not necessarily in the title. try this

allintext:

Search for documents with the given words in their text. allintext:doughnuts chocolate will find all the documents with text containing ‘doughnuts’ and ‘chocolate’.This operator cannot be combined with others. try this

intext:

Search for documents with the first word after the intext operator in their text. intext:doughnuts chocolate will find all the documents with text containing ‘doughnuts’ and talking about chocolate. Note that the word ‘chocolate’ is not necessarily in the text try this

allinurl:

Search for documents with the given words in their url. allinurl:doughnuts chocolate will find all the documents with url containing ‘doughnuts’ and ‘chocolate’. This operator cannot be combined with others. try this

inurl:

Search for documents with the first word after the inurl operator in their url. inurl:doughnuts chocolate will find all the documents with url containing ‘doughnuts’ and talking about chocolate. Note that the word ‘chocolate’ is not necessarily in the text try this

allinanchor:

Search for documents with the given words in an anchor. allinurl:doughnuts chocolate will find all the documents with anchor text containing ‘doughnuts’ and ‘chocolate’. This operator cannot be combined with others. try this

inanchor:

Search for documents with the first word after the operator in an anchor. inanchor:doughnuts chocolate will find all the documents with anchor containing ‘doughnuts’ and talking about chocolate. Note that the word ‘chocolate’ is not necessarily in an anchor. try this

Google Calculator Guide try this

+ - * / % ^

you can use Google as a calculator, using standard symbols, for example
3+2 returns 5
4-1 returns 3
6*8 returns 48
15/5 returns 3
3^2 returns 9 (3 raised to power 2)
5%2 returns 1 (the remainder after division)

sqrt,nth root ofx

sqrt(49) returns 7, if you need non-square roots you can use for example 3th root of 27. try this

sin, cos, arctan, tan…try this

google calculator supports various trigonometic functions, expecting a radians value, that can be expressed also using the pi constant: sin(pi/2), tan (2/3*pi)

ln

returns natural (base e) logarithm: ln(e^5) try this

log

returns base 10 logarithm: log(100) try this

!

returns n factorial: 3! try this

Numbers can be entered also in hexadecimal, octal and binary base, using 0x, 0o and 0b prefixes, for example 5 +0xf+0b1001 try this

Conversions

Google supports a lot of conversion tools, here is a small guide: try this

in degrees / in radians

you can convert radians to degrees: pi/2 in degrees or convert degrees into radians: 90 degrees in radians try this

in hex / in binary / in octal / in decimal

you can convert to each of the given bases: 16 in hex , 16 in octal, 16 in binary, 0×11 in decimal 

you can also use 2007 in roman numerals (in case you’re building a temple and you need to know how to write the year on it) try this

distance conversions

you can use 100miles in km , 1m in mm, but also 200000 km in light-second etc.  try this

speed, time, temperature

just some samples: try this
100mph in kph
1 month in seconds
280 kelvin in celsius
50 fahrenheit in celsius

currency

3 € in $ or 3 euros in dollars try this

cooking

I love this…
3 teaspoons in oz try this
1 cup + 1 tablespoon in teaspoon try this

Google Blog Search and a Wordpress Hack - Another Episode..

Google blogsearch offers some of the default google search operators and other less-known operators. Here they are, with some tips and a wordpress hack
Oh, as always, google is a little nervous when using advanced search strings, so sometimes it returns a 404 not found… it’s just trying to display the well-known 403 because it finds the search a bit suspicious… but the page is missing…

link:

this is a standard google operator, but in blogsearch it really works, while in standard google it displays a small percentage of the known inbound links. Finally a way to discover inbound links without using yahoo or technorati! 

inpostauthor:

search for the given string in post author.
Tip: This is a good reason to use your full name while posting, since google blogsearch indexes your name! If you want to gain visibility you should really avoid using a nickname! (well, I discovered this recently, so my posts can still be found searching for inpostauthor:”Ruc” … but this is going to change… this post should be found under inpostauthor:”Ruchit Surati”)
Tip #2:The default wordpress rss-comments module does not use the <author> tag to describe the autor of the comments, so searching for inpostauthor:yourname returns just the blog posts… but if you hack wp-commensrss2.php adding

<author> <?php echo get_comment_author_rss()?> </author>

to the comments loop, for example before the <pubDate> tag, blogsearch will find also your comments.
If you want to test it, just write a comment in this post, wait for google blogsearch to read the rss (it’s very fast, something like ten minutes should be enough) an check with blogsearch!.
I think I’ll wirte a wordpress plugin for this.

update: since wordpress 2.1, the author is included by default in comments rss… there’s no need for this hack anymore :)

inblogtitle:

search for the given string in blog title: inblogtitle:ruchit

inposttitle:

search for the given string in post title: inposttitle:great google search guide

blogurl:

search for blogs with the given url: blogurl:http://www.ruchitsurati.net/or for blogs under the given domain
doughnuts blogurl:wordpress.com searches for blogs talknig about doughnuts on wordpress.com

There are a lot of others possible conversions, just try! :)

Happy Searching..

Thanks.

Ruchit S.