1) Google Query Operators

Here’s my Top Ten list (well, more like 20+) of Google Query Operators:

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2) Putting It All Together: How to Use These Commands & Operators in the Real World

2-1) Exclude Specific Terms That Aren’t Helpful to You

Example use: term1 -term2

Say you were doing research for SEO content that talks about secure URLs, but you wanted to exclude anything that mentioned 404 errors. Because, for your purposes, 404 errors won’t help you. The following would suffice:

secure URLs -404 errors

2-2) Exclude More Than One Term

Example use: term1 -term2 -term3 -term4

If your content research revolved around 404 errors, but all you want are pages that talk about 404 errors (and pages that do not mention 404 errors for canonicals, 500 errors, and the like), you can use this combination:

Example use: secure urls -404 errors -canonicals -500 errors

2-3) Exclude Terms That Are Exact

If you want to find pages that mention technical SEO audits but do not include 404 errors or XML sitemaps in the topical discussion, this operator will help. Please note that it will include XML sitemap unless it’s specified to exclude.

Example use: technical seo -“404 errors” -“xml sitemaps”

3) Technical SEO Audits

3-1) Identify How a Site is Indexed

Example use: site:domainname.com

A tiny window into how a site is indexed by Google can tell you so much about how to tailor your SEO efforts accordingly. Using the site: operator is one of the simpler ways to do this, and you can get an idea of the site’s index count as well.

The index result count can help you identify massive technical errors on a large website. Say, for example, a site physically only has 270 pages but Google is indexing 15,000 pages from the site. This could range from incorrectly generated pages from on-site search, to issues arising from an http:// to https:// transition, and redirects not working properly.

3-2) Remove Multiple Subdomains

Example use: site:domainname.com -inurl:stage -inurl:dev -inurl:staging

If you work on a messy, large international brand website that continues to have issues with staging sites being indexed, but you don’t care about the staging site, this operator can help you exclude all of those messy staging site subdomains.

3-3) Drill Deep Down Into Non-Secure Pages and Audit Your http:// to https:// Transition

Example use: site:domanname.com -inurl:https

This example use excludes the https:// url, but you can also include it by removing the minus sign. Using the operator in this way can help you audit your http:// to https:// transition. This will give you an idea into how Google is indexing your new https:// pages as opposed to their http:// pages.

3-4) Finding Duplicate Content

Example use: site:domainname.com “content search term”

Say you wanted to find out how much a website’s internal duplicate content was being indexed by Google. The combination of these operators will help you do this.

This is useful for gaining a surface insight into how many results are returned by the search term. After finding this out, you can use a tool like Screaming Frog to really dig deeper and find those duplicate content pages that are presenting problems.

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