Google Search Operators: The Complete List (42 Advanced Operators) 10/06/2021, 00:46

Google Search Operators: The

Complete List (42 Advanced
Operators)
Joshua Hardwick Updated: August 3 2020

For anyone that’s been doing SEO for a while, Google advanced search
operators—i.e., special commands that make regular ol’ searches seem
laughably basic in comparison—are nothing new.

Here’s a Google search operator you may be familiar with.

the “site:” operator restricts results to only those from a specified site.

It’s easy to remember most search operators. They’re short commands

that stick in the mind.

But knowing how to use them effectively is an altogether different story.

Most SEOs know the basics, but few have truly mastered them.

In this post, I’ll share 15 actionable tips to help you master search
operators for SEO, which are:

1. Find indexation errors

2. Find non-secure pages (non-https)
3. Find duplicate content issues
4. Find unwanted files and pages on your site
5. Find guest post opportunities
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6. Find resource page opportunities

7. Find sites that feature infographics… so you can pitch YOURS
8. Find more link prospects… AND check how relevant they are
9. Find social profiles for outreach prospects
10. Find internal linking opportunities
11. Find PR opportunities by finding competitor mentions
12. Find sponsored post opportunities
13. Find Q+A threads related to your content
14. Find how often your competitors are publishing new content
15. Find sites linking to competitors

But first, here’s a complete list of all Google search operators and their
functionality.

Google Search Operators: The Complete List

Did you know that Google is constantly killing useful operators?

That’s why most existing lists of Google search operators are outdated
and inaccurate.

For this post, I personally tested EVERY search operator I could find.

Here is a complete list of all working, non-working, and “hit and miss”
Google advanced search operators as of 2018.

“search term”

Force an exact-match search. Use this to refine results for ambiguous

searches, or to exclude synonyms when searching for single words.

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Example: “steve jobs”

OR

Search for X or Y. This will return results related to X or Y, or both. Note:

The pipe (|) operator can also be used in place of “OR.”

Examples: jobs OR gates / jobs | gates

AND

Search for X and Y. This will return only results related to both X and Y.
Note: It doesn’t really make much difference for regular searches, as
Google defaults to “AND” anyway. But it’s very useful when paired with
other operators.

Example: jobs AND gates

Exclude a term or phrase. In our example, any pages returned will be

related to jobs but not Apple (the company).

Example: jobs -apple

Acts as a wildcard and will match any word or phrase.

Example: steve * apple

()

Group multiple terms or search operators to control how the search is

executed.

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Example: (ipad OR iphone) apple

Search for prices. Also works for Euro (€), but not GBP (£)

Example: ipad $329

define:

A dictionary built into Google, basically. This will display the meaning of a
word in a card-like result in the SERPs.

Example: define:entrepreneur

cache:

Returns the most recent cached version of a web page (providing the
page is indexed, of course).

Example: cache:apple.com

filetype:

Restrict results to those of a certain filetype. E.g., PDF, DOCX, TXT, PPT,
etc. Note: The “ext:” operator can also be used—the results are identical.

Example: apple filetype:pdf / apple ext:pdf

site:

Limit results to those from a specific website.

Example: site:apple.com

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related:

Find sites related to a given domain.

Example: related:apple.com

intitle:

Find pages with a certain word (or words) in the title. In our example, any
results containing the word “apple” in the title tag will be returned.

Example: intitle:apple

allintitle:

Similar to “intitle,” but only results containing all of the specified words in
the title tag will be returned.

Example: allintitle:apple iphone

inurl:

Find pages with a certain word (or words) in the URL. For this example,
any results containing the word “apple” in the URL will be returned.

Example: inurl:apple

allinurl:

Similar to “inurl,” but only results containing all of the specified words in
the URL will be returned.

Example: allinurl:apple iphone

intext:

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Find pages containing a certain word (or words) somewhere in the

content. For this example, any results containing the word “apple” in the
page content will be returned.

Example: intext:apple

allintext:

Similar to “intext,” but only results containing all of the specified words
somewhere on the page will be returned.

Example: allintext:apple iphone

AROUND(X)

Proximity search. Find pages containing two words or phrases within X

words of each other. For this example, the words “apple” and “iphone”
must be present in the content and no further than four words apart.

Example: apple AROUND(4) iphone

weather:

Find the weather for a specific location. This is displayed in a weather

snippet, but it also returns results from other “weather” websites.

Example: weather:san francisco

stocks:

See stock information (i.e., price, etc.) for a specific ticker.

Example: stocks:aapl

map:

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Force Google to show map results for a locational search.

Example: map:silicon valley

movie:

Find information about a specific movie. Also finds movie showtimes if the
movie is currently showing near you.

Example: movie:steve jobs

in

Convert one unit to another. Works with currencies, weights,

temperatures, etc.

Example: $329 in GBP

source:

Find news results from a certain source in Google News.

Example: apple source:the_verge

Not exactly a search operator, but acts as a wildcard for Google

Autocomplete.

Example: apple CEO _ jobs

Here are the ones that are hit and miss, according to my testing:

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#..#

Search for a range of numbers. In the example below, searches related to

“WWDC videos” are returned for the years 2010–2014, but not for 2015
and beyond.

Example: wwdc video 2010..2014

inanchor:

Find pages that are being linked to with specific anchor text. For this
example, any results with inbound links containing either “apple” or
“iphone” in the anchor text will be returned.

Example: inanchor:apple iphone

allinanchor:

Similar to “inanchor,” but only results containing all of the specified words
in the inbound anchor text will be returned.

Example: allinanchor:apple iphone

blogurl:

Find blog URLs under a specific domain. This was used in Google blog
search, but I’ve found it does return some results in regular search.

Example: blogurl:microsoft.com

Sidenote.

Google blog search discontinued in 2011

loc:placename

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Find results from a given area.

Example: loc:”san francisco” apple

Sidenote.

Not officially deprecated, but results are inconsistent.

location:

Find news from a certain location in Google News.

Example: loc:”san francisco” apple

Sidenote.

Not officially deprecated, but results are inconsistent.

Here are the Google search operators that have been discontinued and no
longer work.

Force an exact-match search on a single word or phrase.

Example: jobs +apple

Sidenote.

You can do the same thing by using double quotes around your search.

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Include synonyms. Doesn’t work, because Google now includes synonyms

by default. (Hint: Use double quotes to exclude synonyms.)

Example: ~apple

inpostauthor:

Find blog posts written by a specific author. This only worked in Google
Blog search, not regular Google search.

Example: inpostauthor:”steve jobs”

Sidenote.

Google blog search was discontinued in 2011.

allinpostauthor:

Similar to “inpostauthor,” but removes the need for quotes (if you want to
search for a specific author, including surname.)

Example: allinpostauthor:steve jobs

inposttitle:

Find blog posts with specific words in the title. No longer works, as this
operator was unique to the discontinued Google blog search.

Example: intitle:apple iphone

link:

Find pages linking to a specific domain or URL. Google killed this operator
in 2017, but it does still show some results—they likely aren’t particularly
accurate though. (Deprecated in 2017)

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Example: link:apple.com

info:

Find information about a specific page, including the most recent cache,
similar pages, etc. (Deprecated in 2017). Note: The id: operator can also
be used—the results are identical.

Sidenote.

Although the original functionality of this operator is deprecated, it is still

useful for finding the canonical, indexed version of a URL. Thanks to
@glenngabe for pointing this one one!

Example: info:apple.com / id:apple.com

daterange:

Find results from a certain date range. Uses the Julian date format, for
some reason.

Example: daterange:11278–13278

Sidenote.

Not officially deprecated, but doesn’t seem to work.

phonebook:

Find someone’s phone number. (Deprecated in 2010)

Example: phonebook:tim cook

Searches #hashtags. Introduced for Google+; now deprecated.

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Example: #apple

15 Actionable Ways to Use Google Search

Operators
Now let’s tackle a few ways to put these operators into action.

My aim here is to show that you can achieve almost anything with Google
advanced operators if you know how to use and combine them efficiently.

So don’t be afraid to play around and deviate from the examples below.
You might just discover something new.

Bored of reading?

Check out 9 actionable Google search operator tips in Sam Oh’s video.

How to Google with Advanced Search Operators (9 Actionable Tips)

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Let’s go!

1. Find indexation errors

Google indexation errors exist for most sites.

It could be that a page that should be indexed, isn’t. Or vice-versa.

Let’s use the site: operator to see how many pages Google has indexed
for ahrefs.com.

~1,040.

But how many of these pages are blog posts?

Let’s find out.

~249. That’s roughly ¼.

I know Ahrefs blog inside out, so I know this is higher than the number of
posts we have.

Let’s investigate further.

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OK, so it seems that a few odd pages are being indexed.

(This page isn’t even live—it’s a 404)

Such pages should be removed from the SERPs by noindexing them.

Let’s also narrow the search to subdomains and see what we find.

Sidenote.

Here, we’re using the wildcard (*) operator to find all subdomains
belonging to the domain, combined with the exclusion operator (-) to
exclude regular www results.

~731 results.

Here’s a page residing on a subdomain that definitely shouldn’t be

indexed. It gives a 404 error for a start.

Here are a few other ways to uncover indexation errors with Google
operators:
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site:yourblog.com/category — find WordPress blog category pages;

site:yourblog.com inurl:tag — find WordPress “tag” pages.

2. Find non-secure pages (non-https)

HTTPs is a must these days, especially for ecommerce sites.

But did you know that you can find unsecure pages with the site:
operator?

Let’s try it for asos.com.

Oh my, ~2.47M unsecure pages.

It looks like ASAS don’t currently use SSL—unbelievable for such a

large site.

Sidenote.

Don’t worry, Asos customers—their checkout pages are secure

But here’s another crazy thing:

ASOS is accessible at both the https and http versions.

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And we learned all that from a simple site: search!

Sidenote.

I’ve noticed that sometimes, when using this tactic, pages will be indexed
without the https. But when you click-through, you will be directed to the
https version. So don’t assume that your pages are unsecure just because
they appear as such in Google’s index. Always click a few of them to
double-check.

Further reading

We Analyzed the HTTPS Settings of 10,000 Domains and How It

Affects Their SEO — Here’s What We Learned
HTTP vs. HTTPS for SEO: What You Need to Know to Stay in
Google’s Good Graces

3. Find duplicate content issues

Duplicate content = bad.

Here’s a pair of Abercrombie and Fitch jeans from ASOS with this brand
description:

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With third-party brand descriptions like this, they’re often duplicated on

other sites.

But first, I’m wondering how many times this copy appears on asos.com.

~4.2K.

Now I’m wondering if this copy is even unique to ASOS.

Let’s check.

No, it isn’t.

That’s 15 other sites with this exact same copy—i.e., duplicate content.

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Sometimes duplicate content issues can arise from similar product pages,
too.

For example, similar or identical products with different quantity counts.

Here’s an example from ASOS:

You can see that—quantities aside—all of these product pages are

the same.

But duplicate content isn’t only a problem for ecommerce sites.

If you have a blog, then people could be stealing and republishing your
content without attribution.

Let’s see if anyone has stolen and republished our list of SEO tips.

~17 results.

Sidenote.

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You’ll notice that I excluded ahrefs.com from the results using the
exclusion (-) operator—this ensures that the original doesn’t appear in the
search results. I also excluded the word “pinterest.” This was because I
saw a lot of Pinterest results for this search, which aren’t really relevant to
what we’re looking for. I could have excluded just pinterest.com (-
pinterest.com), but as Pinterest has many ccTLDs, this didn’t really help
things. Excluding the word “pinterest” was the best way to clean up the
results.

Most of these are probably syndicated content.

Still, it’s worth checking these out to make sure that they do link back
to you.

Find stolen content in seconds

Content Explorer > In title > enter the title of your page/post > exclude
your own site

You will then see any pages (from our database of 900M+ pieces of
content) with the same title as your page/post.

In this instance, there are 5 results.

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Next, enter your domain under “Highlight unlinked domains.”

This will highlight any sites that don’t link back to you.

You can then reach out to those sites and request the addition of a source
link.

FYI, this filter actually looks for links on a domain-level rather than a page-
level. It is, therefore, possible that the site could be linking to you from
another page, rather than the page in question.

4. Find odd files on your domain (that you may have

forgotten about)

Keeping track of everything on your website can be difficult.

(This is especially true for big sites.)

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For this reason, it’s easy to forget about old files you may have uploaded.

PDF files; Word documents; Powerpoint presentations; text files; etc.

Let’s use the filetype: operator to check for these on ahrefs.com.

Sidenote.

Remember, you can also use the ext: operator—it does the same thing.

Here’s one of those files:

I’ve never seen that piece of content before. Have you?

But we can extend this further than just PDF files.

By combining a few operators, it’s possible to return results for all

supported file types at once.

Sidenote.

The filetype operator does also support things like .asp, .php, .html, etc.
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It’s important to delete or noindex these if you’d prefer people didn’t come
across them.

5. Find guest post opportunities

Guest post opportunities… there are TONS of ways to find them, such as:

But you already knew about that method, right!?

Sidenote.

For those who haven’t seen this one before, it uncovers so-called “write
for us” pages in your niche—the pages many sites create when they’re
actively seeking guest contributions.

So let’s get more creative.

First off: don’t limit yourself to “write for us.”

You can also use:

“become a contributor"
“contribute to”
“write for me” (yep—there are solo bloggers seeking guest posts,
too!)
“guest post guidelines”
inurl:guest-post
inurl:guest-contributor-guidelines
etc.

But here’s a cool tip most people miss:

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You can search for many of these at once.

Sidenote.

Did you notice I’m using the pipe (“|”) operator instead of “OR” this time?
Remember, it does the same thing.

You can even search for multiple footprints AND multiple keywords.

Looking for opportunities in a specific country?

Just add a site:.tld operator.

Here’s another method:

If you know of a serial guest blogger in your niche, try this:

This will find every site that person has written for.

Sidenote.

Don’t forget to exclude their site to keep the results clean!

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How to find even more author guest posts

Content Explorer > author search > exclude their site(s)

For this example, let’s use our very own Tim Soulo.

BOOM. 17 results. All of which are probably guest posts.

For reference, here’s the exact search I entered into Content Explorer:

author:”tim soulo” -site:ahrefs.com -site:bloggerjet.com

Basically, this searches for posts by Tim Soulo. But it also excludes posts
from ahrefs.com and bloggerjet.com (Tim’s personal blog).

Note. Sometimes you will find a few false positives in there. It depends on
how common the persons name happens to be.

But don’t stop there:

You can also use Content Explorer to find sites in your niche that have
never linked to you.

Content Explorer > enter a topic > one article per domain > highlight
unlinked domains

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Here’s one of the unlinked domains I found for ahrefs.com:

This means marketingprofs.com has never linked to us.

Now, this search doesn’t tell us whether or not they have a “write for us”
page. But it doesn’t really matter. The truth is that most sites are usually
happy to accept guest posts if you can offer them “quality” content. It
would, therefore, definitely be worth reaching out and “pitching”
such sites.

Another benefit of using Content Explorer is that you can see stats for
each page, including:

# of RDs;
DR;
Organic traffic estimation;
Social shares;
Etc.

You can also export the results easily.

Finally, if you’re wondering whether a specific site accepts guest posts or

not, try this:

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Sidenote.

You could add even more searches—e.g., “this is a guest article”—to the
list of searches included within the parentheses. I kept this simple for
demonstration purposes.

6. Find resource page opportunities

“Resource” pages round-up the best resources on a topic.

Here’s what a so-called “resource” page looks like:

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All of those links you see = links to resources on other sites.

(Ironically—given the subject nature of that particular page—a lot of

those links are broken)

Further reading

A Simple (But Complete) Guide to Broken Link Building

How to Find and Fix Broken Links (to Reclaim Valuable “Link Juice”)

So if you have a cool resource on your site, you can:

1. find relevant “resource” pages;

2. pitch your resource for inclusion

Here’s one way to find them:

But that can return a lot of junk.

Here’s a cool way to narrow it down:

Or narrow it down even further with:

Sidenote.

Using allintitle: here ensures that the title tag contains the words
“fitness” AND “resources,” and also a number between 5–15.

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a note about the #..# operator

I know what you’re thinking:

Why not use the #..# operator instead of that long sequence of numbers.

Good point!

Let’s try it:

Confused? Here’s the deal:

This operator doesn’t play nicely with most other operators.

Nor does it seem to work a lot of the time anyway—it’s definitely hit
and miss.

So I recommend using a sequence of numbers separated by “OR” or the

pipe (“|”) operator.

It’s a bit of a hassle, but it works.

7. Find sites that feature infographics… so you can

pitch YOURS

Infographics get a bad rap.

Most likely, this is because a lot of people create low-quality, cheap

infographics that serve no real purpose… other than to “attract links.”

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But infographics aren’t always bad.

Here’s the general strategy for infographics:

1. create infographic
2. pitch infographic
3. get featured, get link (and PR!)

But who should you pitch your infographic to?

Just any old sites in your niche?

NO.

You should pitch to sites that are actually likely to want to feature your
infographic.

The best way to do this is to find sites that have featured infographics
before.

Here’s how:

Sidenote.

It can also be worth searching within a recent date range—e.g., the past 3
months. If a site featured an infographic two years ago, that doesn’t
necessarily mean they still care about infographics. Whereas if a site
featured an infographic in the past few months, chances are they still
regularly feature them. But as the “daterange:” operator no longer seems
to work, you’ll have to do this using the in-built filter in Google search.

But again, this can kick back some serious junk.

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So here’s a quick trick:

1. use the above search to find a good, relevant infographic (i.e., well-
designed, etc.)
2. search for that specific infographic

Here’s an example:

This found ~2 results from the last 3 months. And 450+ all-time results.

Do this for a handful of infographics and you’ll have a good list of

prospects.

Not getting great results from Google? Try this.

Have you ever noticed that when an infographic is embedded on a site,

the site owner will usually include the word “infographic” in square
brackets in the title tag?

Example:

Unfortunately, Google search ignores square brackets (even if they’re in

quotes).

But Content Explorer doesn’t.

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Content Explorer > search query > “AND [infographic]”

As you can see, you can also use advanced operators in CE to search for
multiple terms at once. The search above finds results containing “SEO,”
“keyword research,” or “link building” in the title tag, plus “[infographic].”

You can export these easily (with all associated metrics), too.

Further reading

The Visual Format You Should be Using for Link Building (No, It’s NOT
Infographics)
6 Linkable Asset Types (And EXACTLY How to Earn Links With Them)
Deconstructing Linkbait: How to Create Content That Attracts
Backlinks

8. Find more link prospects… AND check how relevant

they really are

Let’s assume you’ve found a site that you want a link from.

It’s been manually vetted for relevance… and all looks good.

Here’s how to find a list of similar sites or pages:

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This returned ~49 results—all of which were similar sites.

Sidenote.

In the example above, we’re looking for similar sites to Ahrefs’ blog—not
Ahrefs as a whole.

want to do the same for specific pages? No problem

Let’s try our link building guide.

That’s ~45 results, all of which are very similar. "

Here’s one of the results: yoast.com/seo-blog

I’m quite familiar with Yoast, so I know it’s a relevant site/prospect.

But let’s assume that I know nothing about this site, how could I quickly
vet this prospect?

Here’s how:

1. do a site:domain.com search, and note down the number of results;

2. do a site:domain.com [niche] search, then also note down the
number of results;
3. divide the second number by the first—if it’s above 0.5, it’s a good,
relevant prospect; if it’s above 0.75, it’s a super-relevant prospect.

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Let’s try this with yoast.com.

Here’s the number of results for a simple site: search:

And site: [niche]:

So that’s 3,330 / 3,950 = ~0.84.

(Remember, >0.75 translates to a very relevant prospect, usually)

Now let’s try the same for a site that I know to be irrelevant: greatist.com.

Number of results for site:greatist.com search: ~18,000

Number of results for site:greatist.com SEO search: ~7

(18,000 / 7 = ~0.0004 = a totally irrelevant site)

IMPORTANT! This is a great way to quick eliminate highly-irrelevant

tactics, but it’s not foolproof—you will sometimes get strange or
unenlightening results. I also want to stress that it’s certainly no
replacement for manually checking a potential prospect’s website. You
should ALWAYS thoroughly check a prospects site before reaching out to

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them. Failure to do that = SPAMMING.

Here’s another way to find similar domains/prospects…

Site Explorer > relevant domain > Competing Domains

For example, let’s assume I was looking for more SEO-related link
prospects.

I could enter ahrefs.com/blog into Site Explorer.

Then check the Competing Domains.

This will reveal domains competing for the same keywords.

9. Find social profiles for outreach prospects

Got someone in mind that you want to reach out to?

Try this trick to find their contact details:

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Sidenote.

You NEED to know their name for this one. This is usually quite easy to
find on most websites—it’s just the contact details that can be somewhat
elusive.

Here are the top 4 results:

BINGO.

You can then contact them directly via social media.

Or use some of the tips from steps #4 and #6 in this article to hunt down
an email address.

Further reading

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9 Actionable Ways To Find Anyone’s Email Address [Updated

for 2018]
11 Ways to Find ANY Personal Email Address

10. Find internal linking opportunities

Internal links are important.

They help visitors to find their way around your site.

And they also bring SEO benefits (when used wisely).

But you need to make sure that you’re ONLY adding internal links where
relevant.

Let’s say that you just published a big list of SEO tips.

Wouldn’t it be cool to add an internal link to that post from any other posts
where you talk about SEO tips?

Definitely.

It’s just that finding relevant places to add such links can be difficult—
especially with big sites.

So here’s a quick trick:

For those of you who still haven’t gotten the hang of search operators,
here’s what this does:

1. Restricts the search to a specific site;

2. Excludes the page/post that you want to build internal links to;
3. Looks for a certain word or phrase in the text.

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Here’s one opportunity I found with this operator:

It took me all of ~3 seconds to find this. "

11. Find PR opportunities by finding competitor mentions

Here’s a page that mentions a competitor of ours—Moz.

Found using this advanced search:

But why no mention of Ahrefs? !

Using site: and intext:, I can see that this site has mentioned us a
couple of times before.

But they haven’t written any posts dedicated to our toolset, as they have
with Moz.

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This presents an opportunity.

Reach out, build a relationship, then perhaps they may write about Ahrefs.

Here’s another cool search that can be used to find competitor reviews:

Sidenote.

Because we’re using “allintitle” rather than “intitle,” this will match only
results with both the word “review” and one of our competitors in the
title tag.

You can build relationships with these people and get them to review your
product/service too.

Go even further with Content Explorer

You can also use the “In title” search in Content Explorer to find
competitor reviews.

I tried this for Ahrefs and found 795 results.

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For clarity, here’s the exact search I used:

review AND (moz OR semrush OR majestic) -site:moz.com -

site:semrush.com -site:majestic.com

But you can go even further by highlighting unlinked mentions.

This highlights the sites that have never linked to you before, so you can
then prioritise them.

Here’s one site that has never linked to Ahrefs, yet has reviewed our
competitor:

You can see that it’s a Domain Rating (DR) 79 website, so it would be well
worth getting a mention on this site.

Here’s another cool tip:

Google’s daterange: operator is now deprecated. But you can still add a
time period filter to find recent competitor mentions.

Just use the inbuilt filter.

Tools > Any time > select time period

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Looks like ~34 reviews of our competitors were published in the

past month.

Want alerts for competitor mentions in real-time? Do this.

Alerts > Mentions > Add alert

Enter the name of your competitor… or any search query you like.

Choose a mode (either “in title” or “everywhere”), add your blocked

domains, then add a recipient.

Set your internal to real-time (or whatever interval you prefer).

Hit “Save.”

You will now receive an email whenever your competitors are mentioned
online.

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12. Find sponsored post opportunities

Sponsored posts are paid-for posts promoting your brand, product or

service.

These are NOT link building opportunities.

Google’s guidelines states the following;

Buying or selling links that pass PageRank. This includes exchanging

money for links, or posts that contain links; exchanging goods or
services for links; or sending someone a “free” product in exchange
for them writing about it and including a link

This is why you should ALWAYS nofollow links in sponsored posts.

But the true value of a sponsored post doesn’t come down to links
anyway.

It comes down to PR—i.e., getting your brand in front of the right people.

Here’s one way to find sponsored post opportunities using Google search
operators:

~151 results. Not bad.

Here are a few other operator combinations to use:

[niche] intext:”this is a sponsored post by”

[niche] intext:”this post was sponsored by”

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[niche] intitle:”sponsored post”

[niche] intitle:”sponsored post archives” inurl:”
category/sponsored-post”
“sponsored” AROUND(3) “post”

Sidenote.

The examples above are exactly that—examples. There are almost

certainly other footprints you can use to find such posts. Don’t be afraid to
try other ideas.

Want to know how much traffic each of these sites get? Do this.

Use this Chrome bookmarklet to extract the Google search results.

Batch Analysis > paste the URLs > select “domain/*” mode > sort by
organic search traffic

Now you have a list of the sites with the most traffic, which are usually the
best opportunities.

13. Find Q+A threads related to your content

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Forums and Q+A sites are great for promoting content.

Sidenote.

Promoting != spamming. Don’t join such sites just to add your links.
Provide value and drop the occasional relevant link in there in the process.

One site that comes to mind is Quora.

Quora allow you to drop relevant links throughout your answers.

an answer on Quora with a link to an SEO blog.

It’s true that these links are nofollowed.

But we’re not trying to build links here—this is about PR!

Here’s one way to find relevant threads:

Don’t limit yourself to Quora, though.

This can be done with any forum or Q+A site.

Here’s the same search for Warrior Forum:

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I also know that Warrior Forum has a search engine optimization category.

Every thread in this category has “.com/search-engine-optimization/” in

the URL.

So I could refine my search even further with the inurl: operator.

I’ve found that using search operators like this allows you to search forum
threads with more granularity than most on-site searches.

Here’s another cool trick…

Site Explorer > quora.com > Organic Keywords > search for a niche-
relevant keyword

You should now see relevant Quora threads sorted by estimated monthly
organic traffic.

Answering such threads can lead to a nice trickle of referral traffic.

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14. Find how often your competitors are publishing new

content

Most blogs reside in a subfolder or on a subdomain.

Examples:

ahrefs.com/blog
blog.hubspot.com
blog.kissmetrics.com

This makes it easy to check how regularly competitors are publishing new
content.

Let’s try this for one of our competitors—SEMrush.

Looks like they have ~4.5K blog posts.

But this isn’t accurate. It includes multi-language versions of the blog,

which reside on subdomains.

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Let’s filter these out.

That’s more like it. ~2.2K blog posts.

Now we know our competitor (SEMrush) has ~2.2K blog posts in total.

Let’s see how many they published in the last month.

Because the daterange: operator no longer works, we’ll instead use

Google’s inbuilt filter.

Tools > Any time > select time period

Sidenote.

Any date range is possible here. Just select “custom.”

~29 blog posts. Interesting.

FYI, that’s ~4x faster than we publish new posts. And they have ~15X
more posts than us in total.

But we still get more traffic… with ~2x the value, might I add #

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Quality over quantity, right!?

You can also use the site: operator combined with a search query to see
how much content a competitor has published on a certain topic.

15. Find sites linking to competitors

Competitors getting links?

What if you could also have them?

Google’s link: operator was officially deprecated in 2017.

But I’ve found that it does still return some results.

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Sidenote.

When doing this, always make sure to exclude your competitors site using
the “site” operator. If you don’t, you’ll also see their internal links.

~900K links.

want to see even more links?

Google’s data is heavily sampled.

It likely isn’t too accurate either.

Site Explorer can provide a much fuller picture of your competitor’s

backlink profile.

~1.5 million backlinks.

That’s a lot more than Google showed us.

This is yet another instance where the time period filter can be useful.

Filtering by the last month, I can see that Moz has gained 18K+ new
backlinks.

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Pretty useful. But this also illustrates how inaccurate this data can be.

Site Explorer picked up 35K+ links for this same period.

That’s almost DOUBLE!

Further reading

7 Actionable Ways to Loot Your Competitors’ Backlinks

The Ultimate Guide to Reverse Engineering Your Competitor’s
Backlinks

Final Thoughts
Google advanced search operators are insanely powerful.

You just have to know how to use them.

But I have to admit that some are more useful than others, especially
when it comes to SEO. I find myself using site:, intitle:, intext:, and
inurl: on an almost daily basis. Yet I rarely use AROUND(X), allintitle:,

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and many of the other more obscure operators.

I’d also add that many operators are borderline useless unless paired with
another operator… or two, or three.

So do play around with them and let me know what you come up with.

I’d be more than happy to add any useful combinations you discover to
the post. "

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