Advanced search operators?

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

I had been told before that I could use

linkdomain:www.mysite.com -www.sitethathatlinksfrequently.com

in order to filter out links from "sitethatlinksfrequently".

I just did that with two sites (-www.site1.com -www.site2.com)

and it says 130 links (instead of around 400).

Then however Im clicking through the results trying to see what pages those links are from (many low quality directories, forums, blogs..?) and after a while it says again "350 links" or so..though the links from site1 and site2 are *not* displayed.

However of those 350 (?lol) links it only displays 250.

I'm lost. Maybe that search operator Ive been using was simply wrong?

[evilgreenmonkey]

Your best bet is to just use Yahoo Site Explorer really, Google is rubbish with the link: command and MSN draws a blank.

As for other "Advanced Operators", here is a quick cheat sheet that I wrote:

"search term"
Using quotes around keywords will only return sites with that exact phrase within a page, rather than pages which contain all/some of the keywords anywhere within the content. So searching for ["white lorry" website] will
return a different result to [white lorry website].

OR
Although Google uses AND conditions in searches by default and therefore filters out the word, an OR operator can be used to find a variety of terms. e.g. ["green flowers" OR "red flowers"] would find pages mentioning either green flowers or red flowers.

+keyword
A + symbol means that Google will only return websites which have that keyword in. Pages shown for the search [butcher shop kosha] may not have the word "kosha" in them, where as [butcher shop +kosha] only returns pages with "kosha" in.

-keyword
The - (minus) symbol is a negative operator, which excludes pages for the result set which contain the specified keyword. A search for [dog website -hot] will return pages relating to dogs, but not those containing the keyword "hot". The + and - operator can also be used with other commands.

~keyword
A ~ (tild) operator will also include synonyms of a keyword in a result set. So [wedding ~caterer] will include pages with the word "caterers" as well as "caterer".

int..int
Using two dots (..) between two integers will show results for any integer between and including those integers on a web page. This command is particularly useful when searching for old and trusted pages. e.g. ["copyright 1996..2003" +widgets] would show pages about widgets which were created between 1996 and 2003.

link:http://www.example.com/
Search result shows every page linking to www.example.com. This command is limited on Google to prevent abuse, although Yahoo Site Explorer is an excellent alternative to this command. MSN currently blocks the command.

site:http://www.example.com/
Shows all pages indexed by Google for www.example.com. This command can be used within a search query to find a term within a site e.g. [porn site:http://dmoz.org/]. The command can also be used for finding pages on trusted education and government sites. e.g. [porn site:.edu], [porn site:.gov], [porn site:.ac.uk] and [porn site:.gov.uk].

intitle:keyword
Returns a result set where the specified keyword or term is in the web page's title. If a term appears in a page title, the site is much more likely to be relevant for what you're searching for. e.g. ["real estate" intitle:"add link"] or [intitle:recommended +"real estate"]

inanchor:keyword
Find pages which are linked to using a specific anchor text. e.g. [inanchor:"britney spears"].


Hope That Helps

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

thx evilgreenmonkey,

I've never used Google, but always Yahoo's linkdomain: check..which takes you to the site explorer (where you can play around and switch "from all pages" to "except for this domain" etc. to make sure you dont get inflated numbers of the links).

However in order to not see inflated numbers I would also use

linkdomain:www.mysite.com -www.sitethatslinksfrequentlytomysite.com

in order to weed out links from sites that have dozens of links pointing to www.mysite.com

However the problem I described in the first post of this thread occured.

Sometimes actually the yahoo's site explorer will display more links after switching from "from all pages" to "except for this domain" which is another mystery to me...lol..luckily this doesnt happen too often, though...

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

thx, but Google's search operators for counting inbound links are known not to be the best (to put it mildly).

Also you probably meant the link to your website with one http// less and one : more and not linking to the homepage of your blog but to the actual document, right?

[beu]

Originally Posted by NewKidOnTheBlock

thx, but Google's search operators for counting inbound links are known not to be the best (to put it mildly).

Also you probably meant the link to your website with one http// less and one : more and not linking to the homepage of your blog but to the actual document, right?

If it's your site, you might also check your Google Webmaster Tools "internal" and "external" counts. I find those pretty helpful in most cases.

[ciaran]

Originally Posted by evilgreenmonkey

As for other "Advanced Operators", here is a quick cheat sheet that I wrote:

"search term"
Using quotes around keywords will only return sites with that exact phrase within a page, rather than pages which contain all/some of the keywords anywhere within the content. So searching for ["white lorry" website] will
return a different result to [white lorry website].

intitle:keyword
Returns a result set where the specified keyword or term is in the web page's title. If a term appears in a page title, the site is much more likely to be relevant for what you're searching for. e.g. ["real estate" intitle:"add link"] or [intitle:recommended +"real estate"]

inanchor:keyword
Find pages which are linked to using a specific anchor text. e.g. [inanchor:"britney spears"].

And of course combining these three of egm's tips gives you a reasonably quick overview of the (vaguely) optimised competition on a keyword or phrase.

So:

intitle:"key phrase" inanchor:"key phrase"

gives you a snapshot of how many pages have your targeted phrase in their title and at least one inbound link - eh voila, a rough idea of the actual competition.