How To Use Search Operators To Find Link Building Opportunities 2017

You type hundreds of search queries daily on Google, but how much of the content that comes up is actually what you need?

For some queries, we get exactly what we were looking for.

But sometimes, we find the results are totally incompatible.

This post is all about how to use search operators.

But why use search operators at all?
Because using search operators can make your search queries 60% more effective.

Many SEOs use search operators for link building by searching for things like “guest posting opportunities”. Using these little-known operators can narrow the focus of your search and give you exactly what you want.

Read: What Are Backlinks in SEO and What Are the Advantages of Backlinks?

So let’s begin…

What is a Search Operator?

A search operator is simply a character or string of characters used to get more specific search results.

There are thousands of operators that you can use to speed up your process of finding accurate results from search engines.

This post will cover nine important operators that you can start using today.

Important search operators that link builders should know:

1. allinanchor:

The allinanchor: operator gives you results which contain your query as anchor text used in that post.

Let’s say you use the query term:

“best hotels in India”
In order to find all the results that use the anchor text “best hotels in India”, you can use the operator:

“allinanchor: best hotels in India”
2. allintext:

The allintext: operator gives you results which contain your query as text in the page.

For example, if you want to search for:

“link building for beginners”
You can find sites with this specific query as text in their page. Simply put your query with the operator:

“allintext: link building for beginners”
This will return results having “link”, “building”, and “beginners” in the text of that page.

3. allintitle:

Similar to allintext:, the allintitle: operator gives you results that contain your query in the title.

For example, if you want to query for:

“dog training”
You can find only those articles with this query in the title by using the operator:

“allintitle: dog training”
This will give only give results that contain “dog” and “training” in their titles.

4. allinurl:

The allinurl: operator restricts search results to only those which have your query term in URL of the page.

For example, you want to search:

“product reviews”
To find that query in the URL, use the operator:

“allinurl: product reviews”
This operator will only return results that contain “product reviews” in their URL.

Take a look at this screenshot to understand better:

Note: “product reviews” is highlighted in the URLs of the results.

All in URL Search Operator

5. intitle:

The intitle: operator gives you results that contain a specific part of the query in the title.

For example, you want to search for:

“link building service”
To make sure you filter out results that aren’t a service, use the operator:

“link building intitle:service”
This will give you results that contain “service” in the title and “link building” somewhere else.

Important Note: There must be no space between the “intitle:” operator and the following word (EX: intitle:service – CORRECT … intitle: service – INCORRECT).
6. site:

The site: operator is used to find all posts from a particular website.

For example, if you want to see only posts from ShoutMeLoud, then you can simply use the operator:

“site:shoutmeloud.com”
This will restrict Google results to posts that are only from ShoutMeLoud.com.

7. + (now quotation marks)

Initially, the + operator was used to restrict results for an exact keyword or phrase.

After 2011, Google updated its + operator to quotation marks (“).

Now, to search for an exact word or phrase you can simply enclose the word or phrase in quotations.

For example, to find guest posting opportunities for link building, you can use the operator:

link building “write for us”
This will give results that are related to link building that have the specific phrase “write for us” somewhere in the title, URL, description, or elsewhere.