How to Perform Site Specific Search With Google, Yahoo and Bing
Previously we have discussed how to perform a country specific search using any search engine. This involves filtering search results from a specific country which can be useful in certain situations. We have also seen how to perform language specific search on the web. In this tutorial we are going to learn how to use different search engines to perform a site specific search.
By site specific search I mean that you can use a search engine to find content from a specific blog, website or forum. Sometimes you may want to search a popular blog for some tutorial and it’s not always very comfortable to open blogs in different tabs and use their search box to find the content you are looking for.
Instead, you can search any website from Google, Yahoo or Bing. The advantage is that you can filter all the posts that match with specific keywords directly from a search engine.
Perform a Site Specific Search With Google, Yahoo or Bing
The search engines index the content of all websites daily and by using the site operator, you can limit your search within a specific website. The general syntax for the site operator is keyword site: domain.com
For example: performing this site search query shows all the posts from maketecheasier.com which contain the word “Images” in the post title:
Using the same syntax, you can perform a site specific search at Yahoo and Bing as well. For example: This search at Yahoo and this one at Bing shows all the posts that contain the word software in the post title. Let’s take a look at the search results pages now:
Using the At Operator
Google recently introduced an “at” operator which lets you perform the site specific searches more easily. The syntax is keywords at domain.com
This operator shows more results from a specific domain and it’s quite easy to remember as well.
Please note that you can use regular phrases and not just single phrases, when using the site operator or the “at” operator in any of the above search engines.
Using the Advanced Search Options
All the search engines have an “Advanced search” option which you can be used to perform a search within a single or group of domains. Let’s take Google as an example.
Go to the Google homepage and click “Advanced search” placed just right to the Google search box. You will be taken to a new page which looks something like the following:
Enter the name of the site you want to search in the text field “Search within a site or domain” .Then enter the keywords or phrases in the “all these words” text box. You can further exclude some words in the “don’t show pages” text box.
When you are done, hit “Advanced search” and Google will return the results from the specific domain of your choice. The advanced search has an advantage when there are an overwhelming number of results from a specific domain and you want to exclude some keywords from your search (e.g. using Firefox in the main text box and using linux in the excluding text box shows results which contain the word Firefox but not the word Linux.)
The procedure is exactly the same for Yahoo Advanced Search and Bing as well, take a look at the following screenshots:
Search a Specific Site From your Browser – Firefox and Google Chrome
Another neat way to perform a site specific search is to use a browser extension and add a custom search box in Firefox awesome bar. This will allow you to search any website directly, without having to open it and use the internal built in search box. Here are the steps:
1. Install the Add to Search Bar extension and restart Firefox.
2.Go to the website where you would want to perform a custom search often. Right click the search box and choose”"
3. Now click the Firefox Awesome bar and select the custom search engine you just added.
4. Now you can simply type the keywords and hit “Enter” to perform a site specific search using the Firefox’s search box. The extension allows you to add any number of sites, so if you can multiple blogs or websites without any problem.
What methods you use to perform a site specific search? Please let us know your ideas through a comment.
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How to Perform Site Specific Search With Google, Yahoo and Bing originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
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