How many times have you been frustrated trying to find something on Google? The Internet contains so much information that it's almost impossible to find a result that convinces you the first time, right? It has happened to all of us. That's why from Geotelecom we want to share our solution for successfully diving into the sea of information that is the InternetThe footprints.
Whether to perform basic searches, find the best offer for that product of your choice, or wishlist or to delve into the depths of the world of SEO, the footprints will help you save time and achieve quality results.
Want to know how? Then stay tuned.
What are the footprintsIs that eaten?
Those of you who are familiar with Google's advanced search option will have already had your first taste of quality search and will be wondering, How can I benefit from footprints if I already get good results with the advanced search?
Well, one of the most important advantages of these commands is that can be combined with each otherallowing you to refine your search results to the maximum. In addition, the footprints are the keyboard shortcuts of the advanced search option, so they will save you time by not having to fill out the form before submitting the optimized search back to Google. The footprints have an additional advantage, and that is that they allow some extra search options that are not available in the form.
The footprints are a series of commands enabled for the Google search engine that allow you to filter search results to get more accurate results.
For those of you who are even more ambitious, know that you can also go one step further and use the footprints for SEO, since these commands can, for example, detect indexing errors or content on your website, so it is a a cheap and easy way to get your head into the world of SEO. even if you don't have specific or paid tools.
Basic searches: Footprints logical and exact searches
We start with a basic question:
1. What happens when you enter 3 words in Google searches?
For any combination of searches we have three basic options that correspond to the logical operators AND, OR, NOT. This also applies to Google searches, and although it may seem like a very technical concept, it is actually very simple to understand. Let's get to it!
2. How to concatenate words in your search
The AND operator is used to concatenate several independent terms in the same search. If we want to look for ideas for our Halloween costume this year and we have a warrior costume in mind, we would use the terms "costume" and "warrior" with two possible syntaxes:
- Use the addition operator (+) between terms: costume +warrior
- The easiest option, since Google allows you to use the default whitespace as the AND operator: warrior costume
3. Include at least one of the options with the OR operator.
But what if either a warrior or a Viking costume works for us? Instead of a concatenation command, we should opt for either of these two syntaxes to allow more than one search variable:
- Use the pipe operator (|) between terms: Costume (warrior|vikingo)
- The easiest option to remember would be to add the OR command between the terms: Costume (Viking OR warrior)
4. Denying or excluding search results
Another recurring search situation is when we want the search results to not include a term. For example, if we want a viking warrior costume for halloween but we want a we want to remove from the results those of pinterest because we want to buy the costume in a store, we can negativize the term "pinterest" with the NOT operator (the symbol -): warrior costume -pinterest
5. Use "quotation marks" for exact matches.
While with the AND operator we get results that include all three search terms, they will not appear in the same order and there may be text between one term and another. If what we want is for the search to contain exactly the terms we include and in the order in which we include themIf you use the quotation marks, you must use quotation marks: "warrior costume"
6. The wildcard to include unfamiliar terms in your search
As an extra to these searches, we can use the wildcard (simply, by adding the asterisk *) to add space for some intermediate term that we have not yet determined. in our search. For example, how do we do if we want a warrior costume for men, but we don't know what kind of warrior? Very easy! All we have to do is perform a search in quotation marks with a wildcard: "warrior costume * man".
Search for information with footprints
1. Limit the search by price and price ranges.
To narrow the search further, we can even add the price or price range we are willing to pay in the search itself. Simply add the symbol of your currency (€, $...) before the digits et voilafilter applied to the search results. And for set a numerical rangeIf you are looking for a new search engine, nothing as easy as adding a colon between the first and second digit and it will be applied to your searches:
2. Search for information of a similar site and web: info and related
Imagine that in your search for the perfect costume you have found your ideal store but you want to know more about it. Just add the command info: in front of the store name to get its information. In addition, if you want to search for similar stores, just add the command related: and will provide you with a list of similar sites where you can evaluate if you are convinced by yours or if there are more convincing results.
3. Commands for defining and translating search terms: define and translate
Are you one of those who need to know at all times what each concept you read means? Then these commands are for you. With the command defineGoogle allows you to know the definition of a concept without having to resort to dictionaries, since it accesses its own repository and returns the definition directly.
There is also a command specifically designed for you to be able to directly use Google's automatic translation tool. Simply add translate: to your search term and it will automatically take you to its translation. Easy, fast and simple.
Contextualize your searches and save time
At Geotelecom we frequently come across cases of internationalizationcontextualization is one of our priorities in order to make Quality SEO. For this reason, we use some of these for our regular checks commands that help us to contextualize the search and check exactly the URLs we are interested in.
1. Search by file type: Filetype
The command Filetype filters results by file type you are looking for. For example, if you want to search for a product data sheet in PDF format and you don't know if it is indexed or not, you just have to include the footprint filetype in your search and you will narrow down the results. This footprint is also especially useful if you are in the field of education or research, or want to find more in-depth information about a topic and don't know where to start researching.
2. Search by domain or country: The site command
Another useful command for contextualized searches is the command site:. In SEO this command is mainly used to find non-priority URLs, i.e. those that are not in the top positions in the search engine but are still indexed on other pages of the SERP. This command saves us from having to go through several Google pages before reaching our result.
In addition, as we mentioned at the beginning of this section, if you are interested in internationalization, we will let you in on a little secret: With the site: command and the domain name extension you can limit your searches to results from one country..
3. Search by social network and hashtag
Are you a fan of any influencer? Whether you want to search for content from a specific social network (@) or you want to find a topic related to a specific social network (@), we have the right solution for you. hashtag or search trend of the networks themselves (#), Google provides you with footprints easy to remember for both cases:
- @"social network" +search -> @twitter seo
- #footprintsparaseo
Footprints for SEO
In the world of SEO, we are forced to deal with the following on a daily basis meta tagsIt's a lot of information, so we often have to rely on some kind of footprints less popular but equally useful. In addition to the very useful Site command, we use the following:
1. To search in the meta title of the page, Intitle/Allintitle
These commands are used to filter search results that contain in their title (meta title tag) the desired keyword(s).
Do you want the page to contain the search term? Use Intext/Allintext
With these two commands we will find those results that include a specific term or terms within the textual content of the page.
3. Searches in the link paths with Inurl/Allinurl
If you want to find pages whose link contains certain keywords, for example, a Peruvian cooking blog, you should use the inurl command to do so:
4. Let's talk about linkbuilding: Inanchor/Allinanchor
4. Let's talk about linkbuilding: Inanchor/AllinanchorAnother command used for link detection and linkbuilding is the inanchor command. This performs the search based on the text that includes your link of interest. It is a somewhat orthodox way to find links pointing to your site, but it allows you to analyze their anchor text easily.
In any case, it should be noted that this command is not infallible and does not return each and every one of the existing links. Google considers only links that are located on websites with a minimum rating. For more accurate and truthful information, Geotelecom SEO team recommends you to use professional tools such as Ahrefs.
5. Display the latest Cache version of your homepage with cache:
One way to emulate the operation of tools such as Web Archive and get an image of the last record of the page that Google has, is through the cache command: Very useful command to know if they record the changes that you apply at UX level on your website.
BONUS: TOOLS FOR FOOTPRINTS FOR LINKBUILDING
As you can see, the list of footprints Google's search engine is extensive and harbors horrors, so for those brave enough to delve fully into the world of advanced search, we encourage you to dig into the complete list of footprints. And for those who do not want to complicate their lives, we leave you a series of tools that will help you with the linkbuilding:
