Complete List of Google Search Operators and How to Use Them

Google’s search operators are not something you know how to use straight away. In fact, average Google users are not even aware of their existence and, therefore, won’t ever be even looking for a complete list of Google search operators in the first place. 

Since you ended up at our blog (warm welcome, by the way), I can assume that you are probably working with SEO or in the marketing field. Most likely you are already familiar with several of the search operators, but do you know them all and how to get the most out of them? Let’s find out!

In this article you’ll learn:

1. What are Google search operators
2. Why site: operator is probably the mother of all operators
3. Complete list of Google search operators
4. Deprecated Google search operators too unreliable to use

What Are Google Search Operators?

Google Search Operators are basically special characters and symbols that you can add to the search term in order to get more specific information. It’s like an advanced technique of conducting a search. 

Want Google to provide you only with results where your target keyword is included? Use search operators. Want to save your time on scrolling through zillion results for a specific query? Use search operators to make Google work on your terms. 

If you are not familiar at all with Google’s search operators, don’t feel bad. They are super easy to use. You just put the search operator in the search field together with instructions and/or a search phrase. You’ll understand everything in a minute – just keep reading!

Complete List of Google Search Operators and How to Use Them

I’ve put all the operators in the lists. This way it’s so much easier to navigate to some specific ones. Just click on the operator itself and you’ll be navigated straight to desired details about it.

1. site: operator
2. exact match operator: ””
3. negative operator: –
4. operator OR 
5. pipe operator: |
6. parentheses operator: ()
7. operator AND
8. wildcard operator: *
9. currency operator: $
10. intitle: 
11. insubject:
12. allintitle:
13. inurl:
14. allinurl:
15. intext:
16. allintext:
17. filetype:
18. ext:
19. related: 
20. proximity operator: AROUND(X)
21. define:
22. author:
23. cache:
24. weather:
25. stocks:
26. map:
27. movie:
28. source:
29. autocomplete operator: _
30. conversion operator: in

1. The search operator site:

The one I personally use the most is site:. Combined with other operators you can get a lot out of this quite simple operator. 

Just write site: followed by a domain name or URL, and you will see it in the SERPs below.

It’s good if you want to limit your search to a certain domain or URL. Using site: followed by a keyword will show the pages that contain the specific keyword.

Examples:

site:wincher.com – will return all indexed pages, including pages on subdomains.

site:www.wincher.com – will return all indexed pages from the subdomain www.

site:wincher.com/blog – will return all indexed pages from the blog and its subdirectories and pages.

site:wincher.com SEO – will return all indexed pages where SEO is mentioned.

As you can see on the left part of the image, in the first result all subdomains are included. Like www.wincher.com and help.wincher.com. In the right part of the image only results from www.wincher.com are included.

On the left side of this image, you can see all the results from the directory of site:wincher.com/blog. I.e. this would return the whole blog of Wincher. In the right part of the above image, Google would return every page site:wincher.com/blog Oskar Gräsman which has mentioned author – Oskar Gräsman.

Why site: is Probably the Mother of All Operators?

In my opinion, the site: operator is the most useful one for a professional SEO. 

First of all, you can get an idea of how big a website is, in terms of pages. In no time basically. However, bear in mind that pages with a lot of categories, tags, and indexable metadata will make a website look bigger. It’s also not always accurate. You can try the accuracy yourself by using site: on your own website and compare the result with the data from Google Search Console.

If you don’t get any results at all using site: on a domain or URL, that means the site is not in Google’s index. 

The real power of site:, as well as other search operators, lies in the possibility to combine them in creative ways. 

2. The exact match operator:   ””

This operator is called the exact match operator because putting a search query within quotation marks will return searches that match exactly what’s between the quotation marks. 

As you probably have noticed Google works a lot with synonyms and quite often understands very well what the user’s search intent is, rather than trying to only look for exact matches of the keyword or search phrase. Unless you use the exact match operator.

Example: “yoda”

3. The negative operator:   –

The negative operator is also great and works with most other operators. To put it into action, simply put “–” before any keyword and it will exclude it from the search results. 

For example, if you want to look for a Google Home Mini, but don’t want to include searches from Google Store, simply search for Google Home Mini and exclude Google Store by adding a negative operator before it.

Example: google home mini -google store

Note: You can exclude as many keywords as you’d like by following simple logic. 

Example: google home mini -google store -amazon -ebay

4. The operator OR

The OR operator can be used by putting OR (with capital letters) between two keywords. The search results will contain either one or both keywords. 

Although using a professional keyword research tool is a must if you want to choose the right SEO keywords, Google search operators will open new horizons for you while saving you tons of time.

Examples: yoda OR chewbacca 

5. The pipe operator: |

You can use the pipe operator instead of the Google search operator OR. The results will mostly be the same.

Examples: yoda | chewbacca

6. The parentheses operator: ()

The parentheses operator is used in a similar way as in mathematics. It’s used to isolate operators for more advanced searches, using multiple operators at once. 

Example: (yoda OR chewbacca) star wars

7. The operator AND

You don’t need to learn the complete list of google search operators to understand how this one works. Search for x AND y to get only results related to both x and y.

Note: It doesn’t really make much difference for regular searches, as Google defaults to “AND” anyway. But it’s very useful when paired with other operators.

Example: yoda AND chewbacca

8. The wildcard operator: *

The wildcard operator can be used as a wildcard in a search phrase. On its own, this operator doesn’t make a lot of difference. But used in an exact match operator, or together with some other operators, it does do its job. 

Example: yoda * star wars

9. The currency operator: $

The currency operator is used to search for prices. To put it into action simply use a currency sign in front of a number. For the time being it works with $ (US Dollars) and € (Euro). But currently not with £ (British Pounds) or ¥ (Japanese Yen and Chinese yuan).

Example: star wars lego $239

10. The operator intitle:

The intitle: operator lets you search for keywords and key phrases found in the titles of websites. 

Example: intitle:star wars

11. The operator insubject:

Adding this Google search operator will restrict articles in Google Groups to those that include keywords you’ve mentioned in the subject itself. This operator makes it so much easier to filter out what exactly you’re looking for in Google Groups. 

Example: insubject:”star wars”

12. The operator allintitle:

This search operator is almost the equivalent to intitle: operator, but all keywords specified has to be present in the title.

Example:allintitle:darth vader luke skywalker

13. The operator inurl:

A complete list of Google search operators wouldn’t be full without this one. The inurl: operator lets you search for queries found in the URL of websites, including the domain name. 

Example: inurl:apple

14. The operator allinurl:

The allinurl: operator is very similar to the inurl: operator, but all keywords specified has to be present in the URL.

Example: allinurl:apple ipad

15. The operator intext:

This Google search operator lets you search for keywords and key phrases within the body of any website.

Example: intext:star wars

16. The operator allintext:

The allintext: Google search operator is very similar to the intext: operator, but all keywords specified has to be present in the body of a website.

Example: allintext:star wars yoda

17. The operator filetype:

The filetype: operator lets you specify a specific filetype of what you are searching for.

This operator is very useful when you need to find a particular file type. It doesn’t only work well with PDFs, words docs, PowerPoint files, spreadsheets, and the majority of text files, but also with images except for PHP, ASP, and HTML. 

To put it into action just add a specific domain and a search operator filetype: followed by the shortened file type you are looking for. 

Start simple with a site search for one particular file type.

Example: star wars filetype:pdf

18. The operator ext:

Because this is a complete list of Google search operators, I had to add this one too. The ext: operator works just the same as a previous operator filetype: and is an undocumented alias for it. 

Example: star wars ext:pdf

19. The operator related:

The related: operator lets you look for related websites based on a domain name. This operator only works on bigger websites. As an example, google.com itself would return 9 related websites, apple.com 32, nytimes.com 15, and 7 related websites to wincher.com.

Example: related:apple.com

20. The proximity operator AROUND(X)

The AROUND(X) operator, or proximity search operator, helps you to find search results where two words occur within X words from each other. 

Hard to get it? I’ll explain! 

If you type the search like keyword 1 AROUND(3) keyword 2, Google will show you results where these two keywords are mentioned around three words apart from each other in a particular piece of content. 

Example: star wars AROUND(3) darth vader

21. The operator define:

The operator define: makes Google work like a dictionary. define: followed by a word will return the explanation and meaning of that word. Only works for English words.

Example: define:entrepreneur

22. The operator author:

This Google search operator will filter out results in Google Groups to those that only include the author you’ve specified. Mind that you’re not required to add the full name of the author as a partial name or even an email address will work as well. 

Google will search for exactly what you specify. If your query contains [ author:”John Doe” ] (with quotes), Google won’t find articles where the author is specified as “Doe, John.”

This might be helpful because if you use John Doe inside quotation marks instead author:”John Doe”, Google won’t include variations of the author’s name. For example, Doe, John won’t be included in this case.

23. The operator cache:

This Google search operator provides you with the latest cached version of an indexed web page. Unless this is blocked through the meta tag noarchive. If you want to see how a recently edited or updated site or paged looked before the cache: the operator might be very helpful

Example: cache:apple.com

24. The operator weather:

This operator returns Google’s weather widget which presents the weather for a certain location. Works for most locations. Usually, you will get exactly the same result as you get if you search for weather followed by the location, but if you want to be 100% sure to get Google’s weather widget this operator might be very useful. 

Example: weather:stockholm

25. The operator stocks:

The stocks: operator returns a Google widget with information on publicly listed companies based on the ticker symbol, such as GOOGL for Alphabet Inc or AAPL for Apple Inc. 

Example: stocks:aapl

26. The operator map:

The map: operator directly followed by a location will return Google’s map widget. 

Example: map:stockholm

27. The operator movie:

The movie: operator directly followed by a movie name will return information about the movie. The result returned is not very consistent. Sometimes the movie: operator makes little to no difference, whilst in some locations, you will get a lot of extra information. For example where and when a movie is currently showing or available to stream.

Example: movie:star wars

28. The operator source:

This Google search operator source: works in a similar way as the site: operator, but only can be applied for newspapers that appear on Google News. 

Example: apple source:the_verge

29. The autocomplete operator: _

Not exactly a search operator, but acts as a wildcard for Google Autocomplete.

Example: apple CEO _ jobs

30. The conversion operator: in

This complete list of Google search operators wouldn’t be full without one of my favorites. The in operator converts one unit to another. Works with a lot of different things like weights, distance, currencies, temperatures, and much more.

Example: $329 in GBP

Like most things, operators come and go. Some will be missed, some not so much. Below we have listed search operators that have been deprecated. Some have been officially deprecated by Google, others just won’t work or won’t return the expected result. Others might just be way too unreliable. 

A complete list of Google search operators wouldn’t be full without deprecated ones, but I’ve decided to separate them accordingly for your convenience.

The List of Deprecated Search Operators Too Unreliable to Use

1. operator link:
2. tilde operator: ~
3. plus operator: +
4. #..#
5. datarange:
6. inanchor:
7. allinanchor:
8. inpostauthor:
9. allinpostauthor:
10. inposttitle:
11. blogurl:
12. info:
13. id:
14. phonebook:
15. hashtag operator: #
16. location operator: loc:

1. The link: operator

The link: operator followed by a domain or URL used to return sites that were linking to this site. This operator used to be very helpful when doing backlink research, but right now the returned results are often sampled and quite inaccurate. It was officially deprecated in 2017 but still, can return some results.

Example: link:apple.com

2. The tilde operator: ~

The tilde operator could be used to include synonyms of your search query. Google nowadays includes synonyms by default. 

Example: ~apple

3. The plus operator: +

The plus operator was used to force exact match on single phrase searches but was deprecated when Google+ was launched. This operator was not taken back after Google+ officially closed down back in 2019. 

Example: jobs +apple

4. The operator #..#

This operator is supposed to let you search for any number between two different numbers. For example SEO Guide 2017..2020 should return searches relevant to SEO Guide 2017, SEO Guide 2018, SEO Guide 2019, and SEO Guide 2020.

Example: SEO Guide 2017..2020

Although this operator isn’t officially deprecated, most of the time the results are not accurate.

5. The operator datarange:

The datarange: operator used to return searches within a certain period. The time period had to be defined by the Julian date format. The operator still works in some cases, but with a lot of inconsistency. 

Example: daterange:11278–13278

6. The operator inanchor:

This operator was used to return all websites using the specified word or phrase in an anchor text. It still returns some results, but the results returned are often inaccurate.

Example: inanchor:apple iphone

7. The operator allinanchor:

Similar to the one above but must include all words defined. Also deprecated but do return some inaccurate results.

Example: allinanchor:apple iphone

8. The operator inpostauthor:

This operator found posts written by the specified author. It only worked with Google Blog Search and was deprecated when Google Blog Search was discontinued back in 2011. 

Example: inpostauthor:”steve jobs”

9. The operator allinpostauthor:

Similar to the operator above, allinpostauthor: was also deprecated when Google Blog Search was discontinued.

Example: allinpostauthor:steve jobs

10. The operator inposttitle:

This operator is very similar to the intitle: operator. But like the two operators above, this one was also specific for Google Blog Search.

Example: intitle:apple ipad

11. The operator blogurl:

This operator was also used on Google Blog Search to find the blog of a domain. Also deprecated, but still returns some inaccurate results occasionally. 

Example: blogurl:microsoft.com

12. The info: operator

The info: operator returned information about a page, like similar pages and last time it was cached by Google. It was deprecated in 2017.

Example: info:apple.com

13. The id: operator

The id: operator is supposed to work just the same as info: search operator and often it is called an undocumented alias for info:.

Example: id:apple.com

14. The phonebook: operator

This operator could return someone’s phone number but was deprecated in 2010.

Example: phonebook:yoda

15. The hashtag operator: #

The # or hashtag operator was introduced to be able to search hashtags. It was introduced together with Google+ but is now deprecated. 

Example: #starwars

16. The location operator: loc:

The loc: operator limits your search result to a specific location. It’s not officially deprecated, but the returned results are inaccurate and inconsistent.

Example: loc:”san francisco” apple

Final thoughts

It’s really fun to play around with these advanced search operators. The more you practice and explore different use cases, the more proficient you become and will figure out techniques that fit your needs. 

If you conquer using Google search operators, they will help you do an advanced search others are paying money for. 

Yes, the expected result from a lot of the operators is not always a hundred percent accurate, but using the exact match operator has been getting me consistent results for years so far. 

And if I want to do proper keyword research, I’m using Wincher. It helps me define what keywords do I rank for, research new ranking opportunities, and track how those keywords perform on Google. Who said I can’t have the best of both worlds? Grab a free 14-day free trial with no strings attached and get the insights you need to reach #1.

Please share your favorite search operator and what you use it for in the comment section below. Also, feel free to ask any questions you might have or share your feedback on this article.