Some of the most important advanced search operators
Some of the most important advanced search operators
There are literally so many uses for advanced search operators and any SEO worth their salt will use these operators on a consistent basis when it comes to identifying problematic issues on a particular website. The site command is one such operator and is probably the operator that professional SEO's use most often. You can access this operator by typing the word site followed by a colon followed by the URL of your page, website or sub-directory into Google. Google will then return a list of all the URLs currently indexed from your website.
Why is this information useful? Well it provides a very good indication of how much coverage Google is giving your website and it also helps point out any potential glaring errors. Have you just uploaded a number of new pages? Well run the site command, type in the exact URL of a page, and wait to see whether it features in Google's index. Another good use of this feature in Google UK is for checking the total number of pages indexed and also checking whether you can spot any potential duplication issues across all of your websites page titles.
Another useful advanced search operator is the cache command, this command can be accessed by typing the word cache, followed by a colon, followed by the URL of the page in question. This operator will give you an indication on when the page in question was last cached by Google (it's important to remember here that Google's cache can sometimes take upwards of five days to update). This operator is particularly useful when it comes to looking at your website's crawl rate and whether some of your deeper pages are being given enough attention by the Googlebot. It is also useful when it comes to link building, you can use this operator to get a gauge on how quickly your links may be crawled and subsequently start contributing value to your website.