Google advance search operators are useful search queries that can help you determine your competitive environment and assess the level and degree of work that an SEO campaign requires. Here are the Google search operators most commonly used by SEOs:
1. site:
Site:www.website.com will show you the number of pages in your website that are indexed by Google.
If you find a large discrepancy (> 20%) between the number of web pages indexed and the number of pages you have published, you will need to identify and resolve the issues that may be blocking web crawlers.
2. link:
Link:www.webpage.com will display all sites linking to this particular webpage. Since link popularity is an important search engine ranking factor, it's important to determine how many links you have, and how many you need. You should definitely use this search query on your competitors.
It's important to note that Google link operator has taken a huge beating from the SEO community for its lack of accuracy. Most SEOs use Yahoo Site Explorer for more accurate link analysis.
3. allinanchor:
allinanchor:keyword returns all the pages/sites that have links from other pages that contain those specific keywords in link anchor text.
4. allintitle:
allintitle:keyword returns a list of websites that contain the keyword in its title tag.
5. allintext:
allintext:keyword tells Google to display webpages that contain that particular keyword in the body of the page.
It tends to give prominence to documents that contain the keyword at the beginning of the body text.
6. cache:
cache:www.webpage.com indicates the last time the search engine crawled your web page.
7. info:
info:www.webpage.com shows a variety of data about that web page, such as the latest cache date, other similar web pages, web pages that link to your site, web pages within your site and web pages containing the your domain name.
Use Google advanced search operators them to keep track of your SEO efforts and keep an eye on your competition.
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