Search options

Search options

The webpages maintained by the Google Help Center have text describing more than 15 various search options.^[31] The Google operators:

• OR – Search for either one, such as "price high OR low" searches for "price" with "high" or "low".
• "-" – Search while excluding a word, such as "apple -tree" searches where word "tree" is not used.
• "+" – (Removed on October 19, 2011).^[22] Force inclusion of a word, such as "Name +of +the Game" to require the words "of" & "the" to appear on a matching page.
• "*" – Wildcard operator to match any words between other specific words.

Some of the query options are as follows:

• define: – The query prefix "define:" will provide a definition^[31] of the words listed after it.
• stocks: – After "stocks:" the query terms are treated as stock ticker symbols^[31] for lookup.
• site: – Restrict the results to those websites in the given domain,^[31] such as, site:www.acmeacme.com. The option "site:com" will search all domain URLs named with ".com" (no space after "site:").
• intext: – Prefix to search in a webpage text, such as "intext:google search" will list pages with word "google" in the text of the page, and word "search" anywhere (no space after "intext:").
• allintitle: – Only the page titles are searched^[31] (not the remaining text on each webpage).
• intitle: – Prefix to search in a webpage title,^[31] such as "intitle:google search" will list pages with word "google" in title, and word "search" anywhere (no space after "intitle:").
• allinurl: – Only the page URL address lines are searched^[31] (not the text inside each webpage).
• inurl: – Prefix for each word to be found in the URL;^[31] others words are matched anywhere, such as "inurl:acme search" matches "acme" in a URL, but matches "search" anywhere (no space after "inurl:").

The page-display options (or query types) are:

• cache: – Highlights the search-words within the cached document, such as "cache:www.google.com xxx" shows cached content with word "xxx" highlighted.
• link: – The prefix "link:" will list webpages that have links to the specified webpage, such as "link:www.google.com" lists webpages linking to the Google homepage.
• related: – The prefix "related:" will list webpages that are "similar" to a specified web page.
• info: – The prefix "info:" will display some background information about one specified webpage, such as, info:www.google.com. Typically, the info is the first text (160 bytes, about 23 words) contained in the page, displayed in the style of a results entry (for just the 1 page as matching the search).
• filetype: – results will only show files of the desired type (ex filetype:pdf will return pdf files)