Google is the world’s most popular search portal. But did you know that you can use search operators to narrow down your search results more precisely and specifically? In this article we will introduce you to the most important Google search operators and explain how to use them.
What is Google search operator?
Google search operators are special commands you can enter in the Google search bar to filter your results They consist of one or more characters entered before or after the search term. You can see some of these operators listed below:
- “Site:www.allround-pc.com” – search on the Allround-PC website only.
- “Title:“Benchmark” – Searches websites with the word “benchmark” in the title
- “inurl:review” – Searches for websites that have the word “review” in their URL
- “All Titles:iphone AND battery” – Searches for websites that have both the words “iPhone” and “battery” in their title
- “allinurl:cpu -intel” – Searches for websites that have the word “cpu” in their URL but not the word “intel”.
- “Movies:atari” – Searches for information about a movie about “Atari”.
- “Cache:apple.com” shows the latest image of the Apple website.
- “iPhone And “Warranty” – Searches for websites that contain both the words “iPhone” and “warranty”.
- “iPhone or ipad” – Searches for websites that contain either the words “iPhone” or “iPad”.
Apart from the mentioned examples, there are many other search operators for Google, such as “File Type:“Specifically to search PDF, Excel file or similar. The Google search Offers significantly more options, which you can learn more about via the link.
Examples of using the Google search operator
Suppose you are looking for a particular product on the Internet. You know that it is offered by different manufacturers, but you want Results from manufacturers A and B only see A simple Google search will get you a variety of results, including products from manufacturers you’re not interested in. You can narrow your search using the search operator “AND”. So the search query would look like this: product name and manufacturer:a and manufacturer:b. Google will then only give you product results from two manufacturers. Example: 4K monitor and acer and msi.
However, combinations are also possible, for example allintitle: samsung galaxy AND compact. This allows you to search for websites that have Samsung Galaxy and Compact in the title – for example, specifically to search for compact Samsung cell phones.
Another example might be that you are looking for a specific recipe. You know it was published on a certain website, but you can’t remember the URL. If you google the recipe regularly, you will get different results from other websites. Using the search operator “site:” you can Limit your search to relevant websites. So you enter: “recipe name” site: example-webseite.de.
Search operator options
If you don’t want to remember these operators, you can alternatively Google Advanced Search To be used. There are already some fillable search fields to select with operators and some filters to narrow down the results If you don’t want to use filters or search operators and you have a very specific search scenario, you can try describing it to the chatbot Google Bard. However, Bird may currently display incorrect information; Microsoft’s Bing chatbot is another option. With generative AI, Google’s search will soon change and evolve significantly.
For reasons of better readability, masculine, feminine and different language forms (m/f/d) are not used at the same time. All personal names apply equally to all genders.
