Chapter 7: Google Search Operators

Last updated: November 1, 2026.

We don’t always need a paid tool to do SEO. I think one of the most powerful SEO tools has been right in front of us for years:

Google itself.

Instead of running a normal Google search, we can narrow the results down a lot by using a few special commands. We call these search operators.

I’ve been teaching these in my SEO trainings for years. Because sometimes, with the right Google search that takes a few seconds, we can very quickly find:

• The pages on your site that are indexed
• URLs that were exposed to Google by accident
• PDF files
• Specific content from competitors
• Old pages
• Whether the same text has been used on other sites

Let’s start with the simple ones.

1. Quotation marks: Search for exactly this

When you type Hasan Yaşar into Google, Google can interpret the words in different ways. But when we search for "Hasan Yaşar", we’re asking Google for results where these two words appear together.

In SEO, I use this especially when checking originality. You can take a sentence that’s unique to your content and search for it in quotes. For example:

"What matters in SEO isn't just traffic"

When you search for a sentence unique to you like this, you can quickly see whether it has been used word for word on other sites.

Google also officially supports quotation marks for searching an exact phrase (Google Search Help).

2. Minus (-): Let’s remove the results we don’t want

In my old trainings, I used to give an example using my own name. When we searched for "Hasan Yaşar", many other people with the same name showed up besides me. Then we would narrow the search down like this:

"Hasan Yaşar" -futbolcu -tavşanlı -oses

(futbolcu is Turkish for “footballer”; the other two words also belonged to other people with the same name.)

The minus sign tells Google: “Don’t show me results that contain this word.”

This method is very useful, especially when doing research. For example, you’re researching a brand but job listings keep showing up. You can run a search like this:

brand name -jobs -careers

Google’s current help page also supports the - operator for removing words we don’t want from the results.

3. site: One of the ones I use most

For example, if you type:

site:indir.com

you’re asking Google to show only results from the indir.com domain (a Turkish software download site). Let’s narrow it down a bit more:

site:indir.com winrar

This time we can look at the pages on indir.com that Google sees as related to WinRAR. We also used this in Chapter 2 when talking about indexing.

In SEO, there are a few places where I use the site: operator:

• Doing a quick index check for a page
• Looking at which URLs Google sees on a site
• Checking whether unwanted pages have been indexed
• Finding a competitor’s content on a specific topic

For example:

site:competitor.com coffee machine

You can quickly look at your competitor’s pages about coffee machines that appear on Google.

But there’s an important warning here:

The site: operator does not give you a complete list of Google’s index.

That’s why, if we’re investigating a technical indexing problem, it’s better to rely on the URL Inspection tool in Search Console.

4. filetype: Finding files on Google

One of the questions I used to ask in my old trainings was this:

“How do we find PDF files on Turkish university websites that mention the name Hasan Yaşar?”

We can combine operators for this. For example:

"Hasan Yaşar" site:edu.tr filetype:pdf

We’re asking Google to find PDF files on edu.tr domains (Turkish universities) that contain the phrase Hasan Yaşar.

In SEO, we can use this especially for:

• PDF catalogs
• Old documents
• Presentations
• Files that were indexed by accident

For example, when you search:

site:yoursite.com filetype:pdf

you can quickly look through the PDFs Google sees on that domain.

5. before: and after: Searching by date

I think these are very handy but underused operators. For example, with:

site:yoursite.com seo before:2024

we can look at results from before 2024. Or with:

site:yoursite.com seo after:2025

we can look at newer content. You can also use both together:

seo after:2025-01-01 before:2026-01-01

This can be especially useful for:

• Finding old content
• Seeing what a competitor published in a specific period
• Researching pages that have gone out of date

Google now officially supports the before: and after: operators as well. I explain what to do with old content in Chapter 19.

6. inurl: and intitle:

There are two more practical operators we’ve been using in SEO work for years.

inurl: is used to search for results that have a specific word in the URL. For example, with:

site:yoursite.com inurl:blog

we can try to filter out the blog URLs. Or by searching:

site:yoursite.com inurl:tag

we can check whether tag pages we don’t want are showing up on Google.

intitle:, on the other hand, can be used to find results with a specific word in the title. For example:

site:competitor.com intitle:"coffee machine"

This can be a quick way to look at a competitor’s pages that have coffee machine in the title.

inurl: and intitle: are not on Google’s official list of operators, but they still work today. I use the results to get an idea, not as an exact count.

In my old trainings, we also did exercises with students using queries like inurl:haber (haber means “news”) and intitle:.

Operators at a glance

The real power comes from combining operators

Knowing them one by one is useful. But the part I like more is using them together. For example:

site:competitor.com inurl:blog "coffee machine"

We can look for pages in the competitor’s blog section that talk about coffee machines. Or:

site:yoursite.com filetype:pdf before:2024

We can look for old PDFs that Google sees on the site. Or with:

site:yoursite.com inurl:tag

we can check the status of tag URLs we don’t want indexed.

This is where the Google search box starts to turn into a small SEO analysis tool.

Use cases in SEO

In SEO, we can use operators mostly for three jobs: index checks, finding duplicate content and looking at competitor content.

Index checks

A site:yoursite.com search gives you a quick idea of which URLs Google sees on your site. Here you especially need to look for pages you don’t expect to see: tag pages, internal search results, URLs with parameters, test pages.

If your test or development environment is on a separate subdomain, you can also search for that subdomain with site::

site:test.yoursite.com

If results come up, that environment has been exposed to Google. When you want to be sure whether a page is in the index, you still need to check the URL Inspection tool.

Google’s documentation for the site: operator has a few notes that I find useful for index checks:

• site:yoursite.com returns results from www and from the other subdomains as well.
• When you don’t add a keyword, the results aren’t ranked. The shortest URL usually comes first, and the rest are fairly random.
• Don’t expect to see all the URLs of a large site here. A narrower prefix such as site:yoursite.com/blog/ can sometimes show more results.
• By searching for spammy terms that have nothing to do with your site together with site:, you can keep an eye on whether unwanted spam pages are appearing on your site. Google’s example is site:example.com viagra casino.

Finding duplicate content

When you combine quotation marks with the minus sign, you can see whether a sentence from your page has been used on other sites, with your own site removed from the results:

"a unique sentence from your page" -site:yoursite.com

You can run the same check within your own site too. For example, if you search for a sentence from a product description together with site:yoursite.com, you can see on how many different pages of your site the same text is used. I explain what to do with pages that are very similar to each other, the canonical tag and index bloat in Chapter 25.

It’s also very useful for competitor analysis

When we see a competitor, instead of just opening their homepage and saying “It’s a big site,” we can look at what Google knows about that competitor. For example, a search like:

site:competitor.com target keyword

can give us a quick idea of how many different pieces of content the competitor has produced around that topic.

Maybe on a topic we target with a single page, the competitor has created:

• A category
• A guide
• A comparison
• A Q&A
• Product pages

This gives us a good starting point for understanding how much the competitor has invested in the topic.

A few practical queries from an old article of mine

In 2022, I wrote an article on AramaMotoru, a Turkish search marketing site, about how to search Google in more detail. Here are a few of the SEO uses from that article that I still find useful today.

Finding subdomains

Since site: also covers all the subdomains of a domain, it’s easy to separate out everything that isn’t www:

site:yoursite.com -inurl:www

If there’s a subdomain you forgot about, an old campaign site, or the test environment I mentioned above showing up on Google, it comes up here.

Pages that mention your brand

"brand name" -site:yoursite.com

This search shows pages that mention your brand but aren’t on your own site. It’s a good starting point both for keeping track of what’s written about you and for finding sites that mention you without linking. I cover earning backlinks in Chapter 28.

Tracking a competitor’s new pages

site:competitor.com inurl:/products/

If you combine this search with the date filter in Google’s Tools menu and pick, say, the past week, you can see the product pages the competitor has just added without visiting their site.

Searching for several phrases at once

(sponsorship | "our sponsors" | sponsors) site:edu

The vertical bar (|) or OR returns results that contain any one of the phrases. In this example we’re looking for sponsorship pages on university sites. OR isn’t on Google’s official list either. I use it for ideas too, not for exact results.

Instead of running these searches by hand every time, you can set them up in Google Alerts. When a new result comes up, it lands in your inbox.

But operators shouldn’t replace analysis tools

Here, too, we need to avoid one of the mistakes we often make in SEO. Just because Google showed 5,000 results for a site:yoursite.com search, we can’t say “Exactly 5,000 pages of our site are indexed.”

Search operators give us a quick idea. I use them to find the problem, pick up clues and see where to start my investigation.

For a definitive index check, you need to move on to Search Console; for a full site analysis, to Screaming Frog or similar tools; and for ranking and competitor analysis, to the relevant SEO tools.

I think one of the important skills in SEO isn’t just knowing how to use tools, but being able to get information out of the simple tools we have by asking the right questions.

Google search operators are one of the best examples of this. And they’re free.

Practice

• Search for your own domain with site:. Are there URLs in the results you didn’t expect to see (tags, internal search, test pages)?
• If you have a test or development environment, search for that subdomain with site:. Has it been exposed to Google?
• Search for a unique sentence from your most important page in quotes, excluding your own site with -site:. Has it been used on another site?
• Look at your PDFs that show up on Google with site: and filetype:pdf. Are any of them out of date?
• Search for your strongest competitor with site: and your target keyword. How many different types of pages have they created on that topic?
• Search for your brand name in quotes, excluding your own site with -site:. Are there sites that mention you without linking?

Previous: Chapter 6: Why Doesn't Everyone See the Same Rankings? · Contents · Next: Chapter 8: What Is a Keyword?

This chapter was first published in Turkish on X (September 4, 2026).