Today, I was searching for an infographic on Adobe’s website and the results weren’t what I was looking for. Rather than going to a site and then searching internally, I almost always utilize Google shortcuts to search sites. This comes in extremely handy – whether I’m searching for a quote, a code snippet, or a specific filetype.
In this case, the original search was:
site:adobe.com infographicThat result provides every page across all Adobe subdomains that include the word infographic. That brought up thousands of pages from Adobe’s stock photo site so I needed to remove that subdomain from the results:
site:adobe.com -site:stock.adobe.com infographicI subtracted the specific subdomain using the minus sign with the subdomain I was excluding. Now I needed to search for a specific filetype… a png file:
site:adobe.com -site:stock.adobe.com filetype:png infographicThese are all extremely useful shortcuts to search specific sites… but you’d be amazed how else you can target your queries.
How to Search A Specific Site With Google
- site: Searches within a specific site or domain. -site: excludes a domain or subdomain
site:blog.adobe.com martechHow to Search A Social Media Platform With Google
- Use the @ symbol to search a social media platform (just be sure to put the social platform at the end).
"marketing automation" @twitter How to Search For a Specific File Type With Google
- filetype: Searches for a specific type of file, like pdf, doc, txt, mp3, png, gif. You can exclude with -filetype.
site:adobe.com filetype:pdf case studyHow to Search In A Title With Google
- intitle: Searches for a specific word within the title of the webpage rather than the entire page. You can exclude with -intitle.
site:martech.zone intitle:seo- inposttitle: Searches for a specific word within the title of a blog post. You can exclude with -inposttitle.
site:martech.zone inposttitle:seo- allintitle: Search for an entire phrase within a title. You can exclude with -allintitle.
allintitle:how to optimize youtube videoHow to Search In A URL WIth Google
- allinurl: Search for an entire phrase within the words of a URL. You can exclude with -allinurl.
allinurl:how to optimize a blog post- inurl: Search for words within a URL. You can exclude with -inurl.
inurl:how to optimize a blog postHow to Search In Anchor Text WIth Google
- allinanchor: Search for an entire phrase within the anchor text of an image. You can exclude with -allinanchor.
allinanchor:email open statistics- inanchor: Search for a word within the anchor text of an image. You can exclude with -inanchor.
inanchor:"email statistics"Operators for Searching Text With Google
- Use the * between words as a wildcard to look for all combinations.
marketing intext:sales- Use the OR operator between words to look for either term.
site:martech.zone mobile OR smartphone- Use the AND operator between words to look for all terms.
site:martech.zone mobile AND smartphone- Use * as a wildcard to find terms with characters or words in between
customer * management- Use the ~ before your word to find similar words. In this case, terms like university will also appear:
site:nytimes.com ~college- Exclude words with the minus sign
site:martech.zone customer -crm- Find an exact word or phrase by putting them in quotes
site:martech.zone "customer retention"- Find all the words within a single result. You can exclude with -allintext.
allintext:influencer marketing platform- Find all the words within a single result. You can exclude with -intext.
intext:influencer- Find words that are close to one another within a specific number of words
intext:"watch" AROUND(5) "series 7"You can also add more combinations to a search to finitely include and exclude terms, phrases, domains, etc. You can also exclude using the subtract symbol in your searches.
Quick Answers via Google Search
Google also offers some other functions that are really helpful:
- Ranges of numbers, dates, data, or prices using ..
presidents 1980..2021- Weather: Search weather to see the weather in your location or add a city name.
weather indianapolis- Dictionary: Put define in front of any word to see its definition.
define auspicious- Calculations: Enter a math equation like 3*9123, or solve complex graphing equations including +, -, *, /, and trigonometry terms like cos, sin, tan, arcsin. One handy thing with Google calculations is that you can use huge numbers… like 3 trillion / 180 million and get an accurate response. Easier than entering all those zeros on your calculator!
3.5 trillion / 180 million- Percentage: You can also calculate percentage by entering % of:
12% of 457- Unit conversions: Enter any conversion.
3 us dollars in euros- Sports: Search for the name of your team to see a schedule, game scores and more
Indianapolis Colts- Flight Status: Put your full flight number in and get the latest status
flight status UA 1206- Movies: Find out what’s playing locally
movies 46143- Quick facts: Search for the name of a celebrity, location, movie, or song to find related information
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