30-second summary:
- Google advanced search helps you get granular with your searches and deliver hyper-focused searches with the help of search operators (or a combination of them).
- For example, you can search for articles published in the last week by your competitors or discover internal linking opportunities you might’ve missed.
- In this how-to guide, Venngage’s Aditya Sheth outlines six Google advanced search hacks you need to know to master Google search and become a better SEO.
I have to come clean on something: I’m lazy.
While being lazy may not be a virtue, it does come with an unseen advantage: It allows you to look for creative ways to get things done without necessarily spending more time.
And as an SEO[1], I’m always looking for ways to get more done without working longer hours. Essentially: aiming to accomplish more with less.
One way to do more with less is to look for tools, tactics or even hacks that help you cut down time wasted and get more done, faster.
One of my favorite hacks ever? Google advanced search.
But what is it? In simple terms, the Google advanced search helps you fine-tune your searches to find exactly what you’re looking for.
This is an especially useful skill if you want to quickly pull up small-bits of information without always having to rely on tools like Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMRush to do it for you.
In this how-to SEO guide, you’ll use advanced search operators to:
Before we dive into the meat of this guide, first things first:
A mini-crash course on advanced search operators
To keep things simple, we’re going to cover four operators I, as an SEO, use most often.
The first operator is the site search operator. What this allows you