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Advanced Features

Note: Nancy uses this page for presentations on her favorite Google features. You can find more information about these features in other sections of Google Guide.

Like a race car, there are special features if you want more control over your searches.

When you don’t find what you’re seeking, consider specifying more precisely what you want by using Google’s Advanced Search Form, which

  • is easy to use
  • allows you to select or exclude pages with more precision than by only specifying search terms and basic operators (+, -. OR, ~, ..) in Google’s standard search box.

Screen shot pointing to the Advanced Search link on Google's home page.

You can specify most of the Advanced Search page options in a regular search box query by using advanced operators, i.e., query words that have special meaning to Google.

Want to see examples of advanced operators?

  • Fill in the Advanced Search form.
  • Now, look at the search box on the results page.
  • Your query may now include special notation or special operators of the form operator:value.

Note: The colon following the operator name is mandatory.

Advanced operators allow more flexibility than the basic operators and the Advanced Search form.

Find a page by its title.

Google search box with [ allintitle: Wear Sunscreen ].  

Find pages whose titles contain the word “security,” with the word “e-mail” on the text of the page not on microsoft.com.

Google search box with [ intext:e-mail intitle:security -site:microsoft.com ].  

Find crime reports in California.

Google search box with [ location:CA "crime reports" ].  

Find pdf documents with information about financial planning for a child’s college education.

Google search box with [ filetype:pdf financial planning college education ].  

Search non-commercial organizations, educational, and government sites.

Google search box with [ site:.org OR site:.edu OR site:.gov googleguide ].  

Find every page on a site that is included in Google’s index.

Google search box with [ site:www.googleguide.com googleguide ].  

Learn about techniques used by hackers to exploit targets and find sensitive data and how to defend your own websites in Johnny Long’s Google Hacking Mini-Guide.

The Google Guide Advanced Operator Quick Reference (www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html) provides a nice two-page summary of the search operators grouped by type.

There is a list of search operators in the page Alphabetical List of Search Operators.

For tips on using one or more search operators in a query, see the page section “Using More than One Search Operator”.

tags (keywords): , , ,

This page was last modified on: Friday February 2, 2007

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By Nancy Blachman and Jerry Peek who aren't Google employees. For permission to copy & create derivative works, visit Google Guide's Creative Commons License webpage.