Home | List of Articles | Submit an Article | Contact Us

Webmaster-Friendly Google Operators

There are a lot of operators (commands you can enter in the Google search box to return specific results) you can plug into Google in order to find what you want. For webmasters and website owners, however, a few particular operators can be especially useful. Operators can be used to locate potential link partners, evaluate current inbound links, and determine what pages of your website still need to be added to the index. Here are the operators we think you should know:

link:

Simply enter this operator followed by your full url (including http://) with no space. Ex: link:http://www.googleadvisor.org

This operator is one of the most popular and widely used. It simply shows you what (and how many) webpages within the index have a link to your url.

Using this operator, you can also plug in the url of your competitor(s) to see what sites link to them. These websites may be a good place to start in your search for link exchanges (or even one-way links).

site:

This operator will restrict all results to webpages within the domain or website you enter. For example, if you enter site:googleadvisor.org you will find all of the webpages of this site that are listed on Google. This a good operator to use if you want to see just how many webpages of your site Google has indexed, and likewise, how many pages are not listed - the ones you may want to submit, or resubmit, to Google.

allintitle:

Here you enter the operator and some keyword that you are interested in. The results will show you websites and webpages that have that keyword(s) in their title. For example, intitle:google will return all sites that have google in their title, including Google Advisor. This may be used to once again find link partners within your subject area, and to evaluate possible competitors.

Similarly, you can also use intitle: if you want to do a similar search, but open your results to those webpages with the keywords in their content as well . For instance, intitle:google advisor would give you all sites with google in the title and advisor somewhere on the webpage.

info:

This operator is not terribly useful, but its interesting to see what you find. Simply place your url in front of the operator like info:www.googleadvisor.org to get a Google page with your website title and desciption. The page will also contain links to your website's cache, related websites (you can also use the related: operator for this), and more. If your website is new to the index, and you are not appearing for any keywords yet, this is an easy way to find your website and confirm that it is indeed listed. Note: some operators like related: will not work for new websites.

To obtain the full list of operators, visit: http://www.google.com/help/operators.html.

We hope these few operators mentioned above will be of the most use to you as a webmaster or website owner.

Bradley James is the Webmaster of GoogleAdvisor.org [http://www.googleadvisor.org], an informational site providing free information to casual searchers and Webmasters about the Google search engine.

Related Articles:

What is Google AdSense? - By Jakob Jelling http://www.sitetube.com In the mid 1990’s websites used to earn income by receiving money from advertisers by publishing or allowing companies to deploy a banner ad campaign on your website. Usually these banners would be brilliantly designed to catch the eye of the consumer along with a short message. The website in turn ...

Linking Strategies for Google - Google has recently filed an application for a United States patent including the use of historical data in analyzing links. This has caused quite a buzz. Many articles are being written about new linking strategies for Google and how to "beat the system." Techniques to beat the system include registering the domain name for 10 years instead of one ...

How To Use Google As A Niche Website Builder - The popularity of weblogs or blogs has gotten a lot of attention from the media recently. In fact, “blog” was picked as the word of the year by Merriam-Webster, a U.S. dictionary publisher. There are many ways you can start your own blog. One of the easiest ways to set up your own blog is to use Google’s free Blogger.com (http://www.blogge ...

Google Zombies Need To Wake Up - Over the last couple of weeks, I've received more e-mails in response to my article, "Google's Trap, DMOZ's Nap, And Yahoo!'s Crap," than any other article I've ever written. And that's saying a lot because, I've written close to forty articles. Most of the e-mails are very supportive and appreciate of the fact that I'm going after Google an ...

Using Google AdWords to Increase your Adsense Profits - I had been using Google's Adsense program to generate some revenue from my various web sites. Prior to Adsense, I was never previously paid to run these and did so for a hobby. Overall I was pleased with the income I was generating. The only drawback was that I was always looking for ways to get people to my sites. I enjoyed working to bring in ...

Google AdWords - A Quick Overview for Beginners - First of all, you know as well that Google is still the #1 Search Engine in the net, leaving Overture at the second place. If you type a word or a phrase in Google's search box and press "enter", a large number of links will appear in front of you, related to the subject you've typed earlier. Take a look at the right hand side of the main ...

Google Sued Over 'Click Fraud' in Adwords - On June 24, 2005, a lawsuit was filed against Google for alleged click fraud on the Adwords pay-per-click program. The Plaintiff, Click Defense, claims Google failed to enact appropriate measures to guard against fraudulent clicks resulting in unwarranted marketing fees. Click Defense claims it has lost over $5 million to click fraud. Click Frau ...

For a Complete list of Articles with summaries Click Here