In my previous article titled How to use Google search operators, I covered what Google search commands and operators are and how an average tech-savvy person can use them to help improve their Google search results.
When you use search operators, you can focus on specific search terms and exclude others to allow yourself to get the best results for what you are searching for. These search operators allow you to use Google more accurately and effectively.
In this article, I will cover a complete list of Google advanced search operators and offer a free 2022 cheat sheet to help you avoid coming to this article. Next time you want to double-check which advanced operator to use, you can just download the free 2022 cheat sheet and print it for easy reference.
In digital marketing, these advanced search operators are mostly used in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), content marketing, research, and link building. Still, anyone can use them since they are not that hard to understand, memorise, and master.
List of 21 Google advanced search operators
| Operator | Definition | Example |
| intitle: | Only searches a page’s title for a word or phrase. Use exact-match (quotes) for phrases. | intitle:digital marketing consultant |
| allintitle: | Only searches a page’s title for every individual term following the “allintitle:”. Same as multiple intitle:’s. | allintitle:Lerato Monareng |
| inurl: | Searches for a certain word (or words) in the URL. | Inurl:lerato |
| allinurl: | Similar to “inurl,” but only returns results containing all of the specified words in the URL. | allinurl:lerato monareng |
| intext: | This global operator allows you to find terms showing up in any area of the webpage, such as the title, the page itself, the URL, and elsewhere. | intext: Mandela |
| allintext: | Similar to “intext,” but only results containing all of the specified words somewhere on the page will be returned. | allintext:Nelson Mandela |
| allinanchor | Useful for performing research on pages that have all terms after inanchor | allinanchor:”how to learn seo” |
| filetype: | Search result will restrict results to those of a certain filetype. E.g., PDF, DOCX, TXT, PPT, etc. | site:leratomonareng.co.zaapple filetype:pdf |
| related: | Google search will find sites related to a given domain. | Related: leratomonareng.co.za |
| site: | Search within a certain website or web domain. | site:www.leratomonareng.co.za |
| cache: | Google will find the most recent cached (saved) version of a webpage. | cached: www.leratomonareng.co.za |
| inposttitle: | Search for a term within a blog post title. | Inposttitle:Google search operators |
| inanchor: | Search for sites linked with specific anchor text. | inanchor:lerato monareng |
| AROUND(X) | Searches results where two or more terms appear on the page | tesla AROUND(3) edison |
| location: | Google will find news from a certain location in Google News. | Loc:”Johannesburg” EFF |
| Exclude words: (-) | This command excludes words that you don’t want to appear in the search results. | “Digital marketing consultant -lerato monareng” |
| Add words: (-) | This command adds words that you want to be included in the search results | “Lerato Monareng +SEO” |
| info: | Helps you find information related to the domain you are searching for | “Info:leratomonareng.co.za“ |
| inpostauthor: | This will find blog posts written by a specified author | inpostauthor:”lerato monareng” |
| allinpostauthor: | Similar to “inpostauthor,” but removes the need for quotes | Allinpostauthor:lerato monareng |
| link: | Finds pages linking to a specified website domain or Url | link:leratomonareng.co.za |
2022 Google advanced search operators cheat sheet (PDF Download Now)
