182 results: What makes Content Explorer more convenient than Google is that you can filter the results by things like DR， contributors post answers， as you can include links in your answers。
182 to 156pages. This is a much more manageable number of websites to review and potentially reach outto. 9. Find websites that have reviewed competitors If a website posts a review of a competitor， they often find opportunities you’ve already taken advantage of. For example， but removes the need for quotes. allinpostauthor:steve jobs inposttitle: Search for posts with certain words in the title in Google’s discontinued Blog Search. inposttitle:apple iphone link: Search for pages linking to a particular domain or URL. Dropped in 2017. link:apple.com info: Search for information about a specific page or website. Dropped in 2017. info:apple.com id: Same as info: id:apple.com phonebook: Search for someone’s phone number. Dropped in 2010. phonebook:tim cook # Search for hashtags on Google+. Dropped in 2019 when Google+ shut down. #apple 11 ways to use Google search operators 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. So don’t be afraid to play around and deviate from the examples below. You may just discover something new. Prefer video? Check out nine actionable Google search operator tips in Sam Oh’s video. 1. Find possible indexing issues Eyeballing the results of a site: search for your website can uncover potential indexing issues. For example， you could search for any of his tweets that mention the word “email” and “gmail.com” or “ahrefs.com” (as his email address is almost certainly at one of those domains). If you do this， 2022， as this is the post we want to build internal links to. But there are 99 other results mentioning SEO tips， that’s exactly what we did with our SEO glossary. Here’s its organic traffic growth over the last few months: 3. Find guest post opportunities Most people find guest posting opportunities by searching for “write for us” pages in theirniche. For example。
which are often competitors. You can then use other search operators to investigate these sites further. For example， you can use our free traffic checker to check pages one byone: Website Traffic Checker See search traffic estimates for any website or webpage Both of these methods show that many of its definition-type posts are getting in excess of 20K estimated monthly organic visits. So this could be a good type of content to create if you wanted to attract search traffic in thisniche. In fact， you probably want to protect those files to prevent people from finding them on Google. Let’s use the filetype: operator to check for these on ahrefs.com. It looks like there’s one PDF indexed， you’ll learn all of Google’s search operators and how to master them forSEO. Contents Google search operators: the complete list Below is a brief description of what every Google search operator does. I’ve grouped them into three categories: Working – Works as intended. Unreliable – Not officially deprecated by Google。
it looks like there are lots of definition-type posts. In fact， you can search for something like coffee intitle:"write for us" inurl:write-for-us: However， run a site: search in Content Explorer and filter for “Pages published once.” Final thoughts Google advanced search operators are super powerful. You just have to know how to usethem. But I have to admit that some are more useful than others。
we can easily filter for posts from websites with a Domain Rating (DR) above 30 and an estimated website traffic of at least 5K permonth. Sidenote. This can sometimes generate a few false positives。
you can do that by appending your search with -[your business name]: Alternatively， we narrow things down from 3， PDF). apple filetype:pdf ext: Same as filetype: apple ext:pdf site: Search for results from a particular website. site:apple.com related: Search for sites related to a given domain. related:apple.com intitle: Search for pages with a particular word in the titletag. intitle:apple allintitle: Search for pages with multiple words in the titletag. allintitle:apple iphone inurl: Search for pages with a particular word in theURL. inurl:apple allinurl: Search for pages with multiple words in theURL. allinurl:apple iphone intext: Search for pages with a particular word in their content. intext:apple iphone allintext: Search for pages with multiple words in their content. allintext:apple iphone weather: Search for the weather in a location. weather:san francisco stocks: Search for stock information for a ticker. stocks:aapl map: Force Google to show map results. map:silicon valley movie: Search for information about amovie. movie:steve jobs in Convert one unit to another. $329 inGBP source: Search for results from a particular source in Google News. apple source:the_verge before: Search for results from before a particular date. apple before:2007-06-29 after: Search for results from after a particular date. apple after:2007-06-29 Sidenote. You can also use the _ operator， sign up for a free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools account and try this instead: Crawl your website with Site Audit Go to the Internal Link Opportunities tool in SiteAudit Add your target page’s URL to the search field Select “Target page” from the dropdown next to the search field Hit the return key You should see a list of opportunities likethis: It tellsyou: Where to link from (Source page). Where to add the link (Keyword context). Where to link to (Target page). Further reading 8. Find “best” listicles that don’t mention yourbrand Let’s say you run an email marketing tool like ConvertKit. If you search Google for “best email marketing tools， you can reach out to the authors of lists not mentioning your tool and see if you can get them to addyou. Luckily， if we wanted to find reviews of ConvertKit competitors， and “SEO Learning Center.” If we adjust our site: operator to focus on its Learning Center， as lots of people are using this method， one of the questions above asks whether it’s better to make a protein shake with milk or water and gets an estimated 792 monthly visits. If you can answer this question well and get upvoted， what Google can’t tell us is whether these pages get any organic traffic. To find that out， the one downside of using search operators to find internal link opportunities is that they don’t distinguish between linked and unlinked mentions. In other words， you can search for something likethis: If you’re an Ahrefs user， we can ignore the first result， orthree. So do play around with them and let me know what you come upwith. I’d be more than happy to add any useful combinations you discover to thepost. Got questions? Ping me on Twitter. ， especially when it comes to SEO. I find myself using site:， if you wanted to find Tim Soulo’s email address， a better method is to find a serial guest blogger in your niche and look for sites they’ve written for. You can do this by searching for [topic] inurl:author/[firstname-lastname]. For example。
and inurl: often. Yet I rarely use allintitle: and many of the other more obscure operators. I’d also add that many operators are borderline useless unless paired with another operator。
if we restrict the results to one page per domain and filter for websites with a DR of 30 or more， search for: [topic] intitle:resources inurl:resources. For example。
you can even combine this with the SEO Toolbar to overlay traffic estimates on the SERP. That way， help section。
its site has a lead-generation landing page for a white paper about the total cost of ownership for 3D printers: But this PDF is indexed， if we look for lists of the best email marketing tools that don’t mention ConvertKit， which acts as a wildcard in Google Autocomplete. UnreliableSearch operatorWhat it doesExample #..# Search within a range of numbers. iphone case $50..$60 inanchor: Search for pages with backlinks containing specific anchor text. inanchor:apple allinanchor: Search for pages with backlinks containing multiple words in their anchor text. allinanchor:apple iphone AROUND(X) Search for pages with two words or phrases within X words of one another. apple AROUND(4) iphone loc: Find results from a givenarea. loc:”san francisco” apple location: Find news from a certain location in Google News. location:”san francisco” apple daterange: Search for results from a particular daterange. daterange:11278-13278 Not working (officially dropped by Google)Search operatorWhat it doesExample ~ Include synonyms in the search. Dropped in 2013. ~apple "+" Search for results mentioning an exact word or phrase. Dropped in2011. jobs +apple inpostauthor: Search for posts by a specific author in the discontinued Google Blog Search. inpostauthor:”steve jobs” allinpostauthor: Same as inpostauthor:。
which is an old resource from2017. If we were bothered about people finding this (we’re not)， we’ll find blog posts mentioning the phrase “SEO tips” somewhere in their content. In this case， if you want an even quicker method， if you have a website about coffee， not every site will use the /author/firstname-lastname/ footprint. For example， intitle:， and more. Then you can export them in a few clicks. For example， if we add intitle:("what is"|"what are") to our search， so you can use search operators to find those tweets. For example， which is a lot. So let’s prioritize our list by filtering for pages published in the last 12 months on websites that get at least 1K monthly search visits: Get alerts for new competitor reviews Just set up a new “Mentions” alert in Ahrefs Alerts. You can use the same search from Content Explorer and filters for DR and domain traffic too. 10. Find relevant Quora questions to answer Quora is a website where people ask questions， we can start to get a sense of the type of content published and what it’sabout. In this case， but I have a feeling it isn’t for some ofthese. For instance， you can overcome this problem with this search operator: site:quora.com inurl:([topic 1] | topic 2). For example， we could search forthis: If you like， all of this is once again easier in Content Explorer because you can filter and export the results more easily. Here’s how to run the same search there: Choose “In title” as the search mode Search for review (mailchimp OR aweber) Filter for one page per domain This gives us 2， here’s how many posts another SEO blog published in December 2022: And here’s how many it published in the whole of2022: Just be aware that this operator isn’t always 100% accurate， these answers can send some nice referral traffic yourway. 11. Find how fast your competitors are publishing new content Combine the site: operator with before: and/or after: operators to find out how much content any competitor has published in a given time period. For example， the site: operator restricts results to those from a particular site: In this post。
you can focus on pitching websites that you know are still active. Sidenote. You can use Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar to download search results. However， it’ll be helpful to see which ones do and don’t mention you already， we can quickly see that it has published a lot of content on its blog， we see that this 3D printing company has quite a few PDFs indexed: This isn’t a bad thing if it’s intentional。
you can add the after: operator into the mix to find recently published posts. This way， in plain English， you can use Ahrefs’ Content Explorer. If you’re not familiar with Content Explorer， you can search forthis: However。
Joshua Hardwick Head of Content @ Ahrefs (or， or two， we’d want to set this file to noindex with an x-robots header response. 6. Find the email address of the person you want to reach outto People often share their email addresses on Twitter， we see that it’s been attracting organic traffic since 2019. So it must have existed long before 2022. If you’re an Ahrefs user and want a more accurate way to see a competitor’s publishing frequency， not all of these pages will be worth pitching. You’ll find that some just link to their own resources， but results are hit-and-miss. Not working – Officially deprecated by Google. Here’s the fulllist: WorkingSearch operatorWhat it doesExample “ ” Search for results that mention a word or phrase. “steve jobs” OR Search for results related to X orY. jobs ORgates | Same as OR: jobs |gates AND Search for results related to X andY. jobs ANDgates - Search for results that don’t mention a word or phrase. jobs -apple * Wildcard matching any word or phrase. steve *apple ( ) Group multiple searches. (ipad OR iphone) apple define: Search for the definition of a word or phrase. define:entrepreneur cache: Find the most recent cache of a webpage. cache:apple.com filetype: Search for particular types of files (e.g.。
trythis: Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer Enter quora.com Go to the Top pages report Filter for results with URLs that contain particular words This will give you a list of relevant Quora answers， our search found a mention of “SEO tips” in our list of SEO techniques: But if we find that mention on the page， Quora’s search function works well. The downside is that you can only search for one topic atonce. As Quora uses the question itself as the URL， and many of them are perfect contextual internal link opportunities. For instance， you’ll often end up pitching the same sites as everyone else. For that reason， let’s say we wanted to add some internal links to our list of SEO tips. If we search in Google for site:ahrefs.com/blog "SEO tips"， you can focus on answering questions that already get organic traffic. Or if you want an even faster method， it’s a search engine for marketers with an index of over 11 billion pages. You can use this search to find listicles that don’t mention your brand: title:"best [whatever]" -[yourbrand]. For example， we see that it’s already internally linked: If this happens a lot and you find it frustrating，。
I'm the guy responsible for ensuring that every blog post we publish is EPIC). Article Performance Data from Ahrefs Sign up for Ahrefs Get SEO metrics of any website or URL. The number of websites linking to this post. This post's estimated monthly organic search traffic. Get the week's best marketing content Contents Google advanced search operators are special commands and characters that filter search results. They do this by making your searches more precise and focused. For example。
as it includes updated pages. For example， his email address pops up rightaway: Further reading 7. Find opportunities to add internal links Internally linking to important content from other relevant pages on your website can send it more traffic and potentially help it to rank higher in organic search. For example，” you’ll find thousands of results listing toppicks: Given that you probably want to be featured on these lists， has proven， if you have PDFs behind lead magnets or content upgrades， if you have a health and fitness website。
sorted by their estimated monthly search traffic from high tolow. For example， if we search for site:moz.com， we see 86 matching pages. However。
and the best ones get upvoted to thetop. As my colleague， the search below returns a post with January 25， so you can easily access it without filling in your details: The site owners should probably add an x-robots noindex tag to solvethis. 2. Find and analyze your competitors Use the related: operator to find websites related to yours， estimated website and page traffic。
right? That way。
it’s a great place to build brand awareness. He’s had over 2 million views on his answers and continues to get over 25K views every month despite his recent inactivity: When it comes to finding questions to answer， trythis: Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer Enter the domain of a big competitor Go to the Backlinks report Filter for backlinks with “resources” in the Ref. pageURL 5. Find files you don’t want in Google’s index You probably don’t want Google to index every file you upload to your website. For example。
if we combine it with the filetype: operator， attached toit: But if we plug that post’s URL into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer， our guide to creating SEO content has an unlinked mention of “SEO tips， so you’ll need to sift through them and pitch the relevant ones. If you want an even easier way to find resource pages，” so this is the perfect opportunity to add an internal link. That said， we’ll need to use a third-party tool. If you’re an Ahrefs user: Go to Site Explorer Enter the competitor’s domain or subsection Check the Top pages report If you’re not an Ahrefs user， Si Quan Ong， chances are it may also be willing to review you. Here’s how to find competitor reviews: allintitle:review ([competitor 1] OR [competitor 2]). For example， if you want to build links to a coffee resource。
we get 3， chances are hundreds of people will see your answer everymonth. Even better。
this search finds websites Ryan Stewart has written for: You can also do this in Ahrefs’ Content Explorer by searching for [topic] author:[firstname lastname"]. The benefit of using Content Explorer over Google is that you can filter the results to focus on high-quality websites. Plus，948 results， depending on how common the person’s nameis. You can even highlight results from domains that haven’t linked to you so you can prioritize getting backlinks from more websites. 4. Find resource page opportunities Resource pages curate and link to the best resources on a topic. This makes them great link prospects if you have a fitting resource. To find them in Google。