After several years of dormancy, I dusted off my old copy of ScrapeBox today. I was trying to relearn it and realized that I forgot all about the cool custom footprints I used to come up with and how it helped me dig deep to scrape some of those hard to find opportunities. So here I am almost ten years later searching around for custom footprints and I came across this old gem of an article I posted back in 2010. I decided that much like my old ScrapeBox, maybe it was time to dust off this article and repost it. That being said, many of these footprints may not be operational as many platforms have come and gone but you’ll still get plenty of use out of this list and can fill in the blanks yourself. Maybe if I get enough requests, I’ll post an all new updated list for 2018
Google Advanced Operators aka Footprints are basically extra commands that you type into Google that help you filter your search. Think of them as searching short-cuts to help you find what you need easier and faster. Google has always had Advanced Search Operators and often released new ones, unannounced. Some of us SEOs out there stumbled across these years ago and started to find ways to use them in our SEO techniques. When used in combination to scrape sites, we called them custom footprints but now Google has officially coined these tools Google Advanced Operators.
Google Operators Mostly Used in SEO
link:
Find a list of pages that link to the specified URL. Yahoo had this same operator that turned into a wonderful site explorer tool because unlike Google, Yahoo showed all or at least almost every link that pointed to a site while Google just gives a small glimpse. Unfortunately, Yahoo discontinued site explorer and there still is no free replacement.
will show sites that link to the specified URL
allinanchor:
Wanna find what anchor text links to which sites? Use this operator to get results only from sites that have links pointing to them using ALL of the keywords in their anchor text. Lets say you wanted to find websites that had links pointing to it and those links contained all of the keywords that you stipulated even if you stipulate 3 or 4 keywords along with your search (e.g.[allinanchor:keyword1 keyword2 keyword3] will show only sites that have all of those keywords in anchor text pointing to their site).
[allinanchor:porn seo] this means the links must contain both or all of the keywords in my query
inanchor:
Either one of the terms must appear in the anchor text of links that point to the sites. Unlike allinanchor:, not all of the keywords stipulated must be contained in the results.
[inachor: porn seo] not all of the words must appear in the anchor text of inbound links in order to appear in the SERPs
site:
One of my favorites advanced operators, it will let you quickly see every page of an entire website that Google has already indexed. It can be super useful for getting to know a competitors site better but also to check your own site to measure crawl depth and make sure Google is not indexing areas of your site that you don’t want them snooping around in. These also come in very handy when used in combination with other advanced operators.
[site:irs.gov] will render results from the Internal Revenue Service of America
filetype:
Comes in very handy when searching for specific document file types like .pdf, .swf, .avi, csv, kml
[google leaked raters guidelines 3.18 filetype:pdf] will give results of the actual Google PDF file that was leaked earlier this year.
Exclude Using the (-)
Adding the minus symbol or the dash in front of a word will remove any results that contain that word. A great example of this is if you type in the keyword [sex], then you will get tons of porn results but maybe your teenage daughter just wanted sex related topics and wanted to filter out the porn.
[sex -porn] removes the results that contain the specified keyword
Google Advanced Operators
Calculator
Just type in numbers and full equations and you will see one of the most advanced calculators online today complete with 3d graphing and all!
- + – * / Better than your Texas Instruments you used to carry around in school x/2 (x/2)^2 ln(x) cos(pi*x/5)
- ^ or ** When you want to raise a number to a power 2^5 or 2**5
- % of Find the percentage of one amount to another 1% of 123
Converter:
Converts currency, weight, and other measurements. Some examples are [300 Philippine Peso in USD] or [2342 ft to miles].
[unit1 to unit2] just list two amounts of units and use the word to in between
city1 city2
Google now has a built-in online flight checker not only to see arrivals and departures but also for bookings. Just type in two cities names and it will show flights. You can type out the full name of the city or most cases you can use abbreviations and airport codes or both in the same query like NYC-LAX.
Flights from New York, NY (all airports) to Los Angeles, CA (LAX)
Non-stop flights:40–45 per day, 6h 6m durationAirlines:United, American, Delta, and 2 more+Schedule of non-stop flights |
[nyc lax] get flight information
define:
Super cool tool to just get the definition of something without having to click through to other sites. Like the word triskaidekaphobia which most people have never even heard of but is special to me. The results are pulled from the top dictionary sites. Wikipedia, Websters, Answers.com and Dictionary.com.
[define: triskaidekaphobia] will show you the definition of a word
movie:
Find reviews and showtimes. Not really a movie goer but I’ll list this one anyways just in case you got a big date coming up and you want to be slick and take her for a movie and popcorn.
[movie: the campaign] I just chose a movie title that I wanted to see
stocks:
Putting [stocks:] in front of the financial symbol of a company will give you a brief but informational overview of how the stock is currently performing in the market.
[stocks: goog] will tell you how Googles stock is doing in the market
weather:
Quickly find the weather in any city by just typing [weather] in front of the city’s name.
[weather Angeles city] you’ll see that I’m in the middle of the monsoon season in the Philippines 🙁
cache:
You can see what the site looked like the last time Google cached it. This can be helpful for seeing how Google caches your site and also for retrieving archived content.
[cashe: whitehouse.gov] will show you what the White Houses website looked like last time Google cashed it.
info:
You will get a list of links that you can quickly access to get more information about a specific website. Here’s what the results will look like.
Google can show you the following information for this URL:
- Show Googles cache of whitehouse.gov
- Find web pages that are similar to whitehouse.gov
- Find web pages that link to whitehouse.gov
- Find web pages from the site whitehouse.gov
- Find web pages that contain the term whitehouse.gov
[info: whitehouse.gov] will provide information about the official White House website
related:
Using this advanced operator, Google will give you results to related websites or at least websites their algorithms deem to be related. It can also be a good way to find one’s competitors or a great way to find sites to get links from because after all, these are the most relevant sites in the eyes of Google.
[related:bored.com] a flash games site I used to work on so it should show other gaming sites
allintext:
The terms following the allintext: must all be included in the text of the results. While the is especially good for find recipes that have some of your favorite ingredients, it’s also good for finding subject matter that you might not normally see together.
[allintext: jesus atheist dawkins] Will show results that contain all 3 keywords on the page
intext:
Unlike allintext where all of the keywords must be in the text, any one of the keywords in your query must be in the text of the websites shown in the results.
[intext: jesus atheist dawkins] should show different results as not all 3 words must be in the text of the pages rendered
allintitle:
Search for sites that have all of the keywords that you’ve stipulated in their title. This operator only renders results from the meta title of a page.
[allintitle:porn SEO finest] will only show sites that have all of the keywords in their meta title tag.
intitle:
Not all of the keywords in your query must be in the title.
[intitle:porn SEO finest] you will see results that don’t have the keyword finest but they must contain at least one of the other keywords.
allinurl:
All of the keywords stipulated in your query must be in the URL of the pages rendered.
[allinurl:panda friendly article writing] will render results from pages that have all 4 of the keywords in their URL
location:
This advanced operator only works when searching in Google News. If you want to find news stories from a specific location.
[floods location:Philippines] this query will shows result from Philippines news arrogates
source:
This is another Google Operator that only works with Google News. It will render results only from the specified source.
[porn stars source:cnn] will show all the news results where CNN mentioned porn stars
AROUND( x) Word Proximity
Will give results from pages where the keywords queried must be within x amount of words from each other. Let’s say you were looking for a page that had sentences that contained both the keyword search and engine within 4 words of each other then your search would look like this
[search around4 engine] this means that engine must appear within 4 words of the word search
Fill in the blanks (*)
The * aka, asterisk symbol aka, a wildcard is a common character in almost all coding languages and it usually means anything which means that the * is a placeholder for anything and everything that may follow.
[ Romney voted * on the * bill ] this will give results where Romney could have voted yes or no on any bill.
Number Ranges (..)
Put two periods in between a date range and get results from within that range.
[Richard Dawkins 2005..2009] will show all the pages published about Richard Dawkins within that date range.
Exact Search ()
When you put your keyword query inside double quotes that is telling Google that the results must contain those keywords exactly as you typed them and in that exact order. The reason this can be helpful is because sometimes Google uses synonyms and because the order in which words are typed can also have an effect on the results that are rendered.
[“imagine all the people”] will show the exact results from the John Lennon song
Keyword OR Keyword
This one is pretty self-explanatory if you want to get results from the two keywords at the same time. Sometimes you are looking for something that is referred to in two different terms like outsourcing and BPO.
[outsourcing OR BPO] will give results about outsourcing and BPO.
Combinations of operators:
Using these operators alone can be very helpful but when used in combination they can really become ultimate mining tools for targeting and harvesting large lists of sites. Let’s say you wanted to find all the WordPress sites that are relevant to your site and of course, you want ones that are still open for commenting without having to log in. Lastly, you’d like to narrow it even more to get only .edu sites.
[keyword Inurl:.edu “powered by WordPress” “leave a comment” -“must be logged in to comment”] this will get you an awesome list of sites where you can comment to get links.
Custom Footprints to Use in Advanced Operator Combinations
Here’s a complete list of different footprints that you can use inside your advanced search queries.
WordPress Custom Operator Footprints
Inurl:.edu “powered by WordPress” “leave a comment”
Inurl:.gov “powered by WordPress”
Inurl:.ac.uk “powered by WordPress”
BlogEngine Custom Operators
Inurl:.edu “Powered by BlogEngine.NET 1.4.5.0?
Inurl:.gov “”Powered by BlogEngine.NET 1.4.5.0?
Inurl:.ac.uk “Powered by BlogEngine.NET 1.4.5.0?
Forums
“Powered by PHPbb”
“Powered by vBulletin”
“Powered by SMF”
Guestbooks
allintext:[get a cbox]
“Powered by Tagbox”
Find Forum Register Pages
proudly powered by bbPress
bb-login.php
bbpress topic.php
Powered by PunBB viewforum.php
Powered by PunBB register.php
Currently Active Users: 18 (0 members and 18 guests)
Users active today: 15478 (158 members and 15320 guests)
Threads: 673, Posts: 7,321, Total Members: 376
powered by vbulletin
powered by yabb
powered by ip.board
powered by phpbb
powered by phpbb3
powered by invision power board
powered by e-blah forum software
powered by xmb
powered by: fudforum
powered by fluxbb
powered by forum software minibb
this forum is powered by phorum
powered by punbb
powered by quicksilver forums
powered by seo-board
powered by smf
powered by ubb.threads
powered by the unclassified newsboard
powered by usebb forum software
powered by xennobb
powered by yaf
Powered By MyBB
Powered by IP.Board
powered by phpbb
“Powered by PHPbb”
“Powered by vBulletin”
“Powered by SMF”
“powered by Simple Machines”
inurl:/index.php?action=register
“powered by punBB”
“powered by expressionengine” “yourkeyword” site:.uk
“powered by expressionengine” “yourkeyword” site:.us
“powered by expressionengine” “yourkeyword” site:.eu
“powered by expressionengine” “yourkeyword” site:.uk
“powered by expressionengine” “yourkeyword” site:.us
“powered by expressionengine” “yourkeyword” site:.eu
yabb
ipb
bbs
intext:powered by vbulletin
intext:powered by yabb
intext:powered by ip.board
intext:powered by phpbb
inanchor:vbulletin
inanchor:yabb
inanchor:ip.board
inanchorhpbb
/board
/board/
/foren/
/forum/
/forum/?fnr=
/forums/
/sutra
act=reg
act=sf
act=st
bbs/ezboard.cgi
bbs1/ezboard.cgi
board
board-4you.de
board/ezboard.cgi
boardbook.de
bulletin
cgi-bin/ezboard.cgi
invision
kostenlose-foren.org
kostenloses-forum.com
list.php
lofiversion
modules.php
newbb
newbbs/ezboard.cgi
onlyfree.de/cgi-bin/forum/
phpbbx.de
plusboard.de
post.php
profile.php
showthread.php
siteboard.de
ubb
ultimatebb
unboard.de
webmart.de/f.cfm?id=
xtremeservers.at/board/
yooco.de
phorum
phpbb
yabb
ipb
vbulletin
bbs
cgi-bin/forum/
/cgi-bin/forum/blah.pl
powered by e-blah forum software
powered by xmb
/forumdisplay.php?
/misc.php?action=
member.php?action=
powered by: fudforum
index.php?t=usrinfo
/index.php?t=thread
/index.php?t=
index.php?t=post&frm_id=
powered by fluxbb
/profile.php?id=
viewforum.php?id
login.php
register.php
profile.forum?
posting.forum&mode=newtopic
post.forum?mode=reply
powered by icebb
index.php?s=
act=login&func=register
Other Blog CSMs
BlogEngine
Inurl:.edu “Powered by BlogEngine.NET 1.4.5.0?
Inurl:.gov “”Powered by BlogEngine.NET 1.4.5.0?
Inurl:.ac.uk “Powered by BlogEngine.NET 1.4.5.0?
“Powered by BlogEngine”
Blogsmith
“Powered by Blogsmith”
Typepad
“powered by Typepad”
Scoop
“powered by scoop”
Guestbooks
“Powered by Tagbox”
“Powered by DRBGuestbook”
Please feel free to share some Google Operators that I might have missed in the comments below and also share some of your favorite footprints and combinations.
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