In today’s world, many people are unfamiliar with the term “search operator”. Even those who have used them may not be aware of the actual term, but it is nevertheless a useful tool available to all search engine users. Search operators were more commonly used in years past, when search engines were not as good at discerning overall intent in each search query. These search operators could prove to be helpful in narrowing down or filtering returned information in searches, which would save people time and frustration. Despite advances, search operators can still be quite useful. We’ll discuss a few of the important ones here today.

Search a Specific Website

When you perform a search in Google, you may be ideally looking for a specific result on a specific site. While Google has gotten much better with pinging users with relevant results, it is sometimes much easier to simply specify you are looking for results from a particular website. The search operator “site:” will allow you to search for results from a specific domain or sub-domain. This can be very helpful in cases where a large number of redundant or duplicate results are being returned from irrelevant websites.

Search for Related Content

Some search results may be too narrow or even too relevant for your tastes. This is where you can use the “related:” search operator to spice things up a bit. What this command will do is ensure that a broader category of search results are returned for your specific query. For instance, this can be a great way to find relevant mentions and news about your brand, and it can also be helpful in getting a better understand of how Google associates various websites and topics with your own.

Search Within a Range

It is becoming increasingly common for numbers to be featured within content titles and on pages, and Google seems to be pinging users more and more with content that’s structured this way. For instance, you might find an article comparable to this one titled “25 Great Search Operators to Use Today”. There are many reasons why you might want to find search results like this, and thankfully, Google has a search operator for that. Simply insert “..” in between a range of two numbers and Google will deliver any and all content relevant to your search that falls within that range. This is great for when you want to find the “top 40”, “best 12” or “worst 10” lists for a topic.

Search for Files

Have you ever needed to find specific files on a website or via Google, but don’t know how to narrow down the results? With the “filetype:” or “file:” search operator, you now can! Whether you’re looking for spreadsheets, PDFs or text files, you can use this along with your original query to fetch files that only match this type. Best of all, this can be combined with other search operators in order to refine your results. For instance, if you wanted to find all HTML files on Pingler.com, you’d enter “site:pingler.com filetype:html”.

There are dozens of different search operators that you can use to find what you need via Google. Do you know of or use any other search operators on a regular basis? If so, tell us about your story below and how it helps you to get things done.