Introduction
I have attended the school of “Google” for almost 12 years now. What do I mean by that? Google is such a powerful tool, they made it into a verb. Don’t know how to configure tool-x to do function-x? Google it! Don’t know how to hack the universe? Google it!
But Google is not the only tool useful for powerful searches. My quest for simplicity has led me to learn Live Search. Along that journey, I was surprised to learn that it too could be used powerfully. Don’t know how to turn invisible? Live Search it! Ok, not as catchy as I thought.
Advanced Search Keywords
Similar to Google, Live Search enables you to search for keywords in a special way. Say I want to search for the term “gimp” only on my website. I would use “gimp site:www.ken-mitchell.com”. Here are some of the keywords that can be used.
“filetype”
Restricts the results to file types that you specify. “filetype:pdf” would return only PDF files.
“contains”
Restricts the results to pages that links to a file type. “contains:pdf” would return only pages that link to a PDF file.
“site”
Restricts the results to pages within the site you specify. “site:www.ken-mitchell.com” would return pages within my website.
“ip”
Same as “site”, except using IP as opposed to domain name
“link”
Restricts the results to pages that link to the specified page. “link:www.ken-mitchell.com/about” would return only pages that link to www.ken-mitchell.com.
“linkdomain”
Restricts the results to pages that link to the specified domain. “linkdomain:ken-mitchell.com” would return only pages that link to a page within ken-mitchell.com.
“linkfromdomain”
Restricts the results to pages that link to the specified domain. “linkfromdomain:ken-mitchell.com” would return only pages that are linked to from a page within ken-mitchell.com
“inanchor”, “inbody”, “intitle”, or “inurl”
Restricts the results to pages that contain the specified term in the anchor, body, title, or url respectively.
Note: You can use “-” (dash or minus) to use the exclusive property of the keywords. For instance, using “-site:microsoft.com” would exclude results from microsoft.com
Putting It All Together
The keywords can be combined to make the search more specific. Let us say that we want to search for a readme file (either TXT or PDF) from the Wordpress.org site. “readme site:wordpress.org filetype:(txt or pdf)” returns all pages within wordpress.org that are of type PDF or TXT.
Examples
- Search for all pages that link to images on www.ken-mitchell.com
contains:(jpg or gif or png) site:www.ken-mitchell.com - Find all pages containing term “xbox” linked to from ken-mitchell.com
xbox linkfromdomain:ken-mitchell.com - Find all pages containing term “gimp” that do not contain links to images
gimp site:www.ken-mitchell.com -contains:(jpg or gif or png)
Conclusion
I have barely touched on the combinations possible with these keywords. I hope you can get some use out of them. Don’t be afraid to play with them, the worst that can happen is you get some vulgar pictures pop up.
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