Often times you arrive on a website that has a whole lot of great content but lacks a good quality search functionality. Even if a search box is present, it is very basic and does not do a very good job of finding the content that you are looking for.
If you are ever faced with this situation in the future, you can try using Google's site search function to search for content within that particular website.
I have found that the results returned by Google's site search is generally far better than the one returned by the search engine present on the site (unless of-course the site uses a custom Google search box).
Google's site Search also allows you to search for exact keywords within the title tag or content of the articles which can be particularly useful while looking for specific content on large websites.
So here's how you can use site search to search within websites.
Table of Contents
1. Regular Site Search
To perform a simple site search, go to Google.com and type in the search operator site followed by a colon and then the site name and the keyword you want to search for. The format is as follows:
site:sitename.com keyword
This will return all articles on the site that contain any or all of the given keyword.
Example: Let's say you wanted to search for all articles on the site ScienceDaily.com that offer information on how to live a healthy life. The following is the search that you will need to make in Google.com:
site:sciencedaily.com how to live healthy
The image below shows the results for the above search.
As you can see, all pages on ScienceDaily.com that contain all or any of the keywords how to live healthy have been returned.
2. Site Search with Quotes: Finding the Exact Keyword
If you are looking to find something specific on the site, you can surround your keyword with quotes.
When you use quotes around a keyword, Google only returns pages that have the keyword in that exact order. The following is the format for this:
site:sitename.com "keyword"
Example: Let's say you want to find all articles on Sciencedaily.com that have the phrase Health of Coastal Ecosystems in that exact order. You will need to perform the following search to get the desired results:
site:sciencedaily.com "health of coastal ecosystems"
Image below is the SERP page for the above search:
As you can see from the image, only articles that have the exact keyword health of coastal ecosystems are returned in the search results.
3. Site Search Using Intitle: Find Keyword Within the Heading of an Article
You can use the intitle operator to ensure that your search term appears in the heading of an article. This can lead to very accurate searches.
This search can be made using the following format:
site:sitename.com intitle:keyword
Example: Let's say you want to find all articles on Sciendedaily.com that have one or more of the keyword 30 minutes daily exercise in their title tag. You can do this by performing the following search:
site:sciencedaily.com intitle:30 minutes daily exercise
The below image shows a few results for the above search:
As you can see, the search has returned articles that contain one or more of the keyword 30 minutes daily exercise in their title tag.
4. Site Search Using Intitle and Quotes: Find Exact Keyword Within the Title Tag
As discussed earlier, you can surround your keyword with quotes to find articles that contain the exact keyword in their title tags.
The format for this is as follows:
site:sitename.com intitle:"keyword"
Example: As an example, let's find all articles on ScienceDaily.com that have the keyword Planet Spotted in their title tag.
site:sciencedaily.com intitle:"planet spotted"
The below image shows a few results for the above search:
As you can see, the search has returned articles that have the exact keyword Planet Spotted in their title tags.
5. Time Bound Site Search
You can also conduct time bound searches to find latest content using this method. For instance, let's say you want to find all the latest articles on Space.com on the topic 'Jupiter'.
To do this, simply do a site search in Google, click on 'Tools' and select 'Past Week' or 'Past Month' as shown in the image below. You can also set a custom time duration if you want.
As you can see from the above image, all the latest articles on the topic that were posted 3 and 5 days ago are being displayed. In this search, I am using 'intitle' for more accurate results.
6. Site Search for Images
You can also use the site search command in 'Google Image Search' to find specific images on a website.
For instance, let's say you want to find all the GIF images tagged as 'funny' on Twitter.com. To do this, go to 'Google Image Search' and click on TOOLS and select 'GIF'. Now do a site search using the keyword 'Funny' as shown in the image below:
You can also add a time bound search filter to this as we discussed above.
7. Site Search by Excluding a Keyword
You can also exclude certain terms from your site search query. You can do this by adding a minus sign before the term you want to ignore.
Let's say you want to find all news on CNet.com about iPhones but want to exclude news about iPhone 12. You can do this by conducting a regular site search and then adding '-12' to your search as shown in the image below:
As you can see, this gives you results for all iphones except for 'iPhone 12'.
So this is how simple it is to use Google site search to search within a website's content or title tag.