Searching: Advanced Internet Search

Search commands work in addition to the keywords you enter in the search box. They tell the search engine to look into a specific location or portion of a document. The syntax goes like this:

command:parameter keyword

Most of the examples below are links to saved internet searches so you can see live results and practice.

site:

You can ask the search engine to search for an individual website or group of websites that share a domain.

Type site: followed by the web domain without spaces. For example:

site:nhs.uk rabies vaccination

→ will search all pages on the nhs.uk website that contain the words rabies and vaccination.

site:bcu.ac.uk/library referencing

→ will search pages that contain referencing only on the Library subdomain of the BCU website.

allin_:

You can ask the search engine to retrieve results where your words appear in specific parts of the web page. The most useful are probably:

allintitle:

Gives you results where all the search terms are in the title. For example:

allintitle:"systematic literature review" marketing

→ will find web pages where the phrase "systematic literature review" and the word "marketing" appear in the title.

allinurl:

Returns results where your words appear in the url. For example:

allinurl:bcu

→ finds web pages where "bcu" appears in the url.

allintext:

Returns pages where the specified terms appear anywhere in the text of that page. such as the smaller sized writing in grey that appears underneath each title entry. For example:

allintext:bcu 175 years

→ finds web pages where these words appear in the text of the page

allinanchor:

Returns results of web pages which hyperlinks contain the specified terms. This can be very useful to search specific pages in a website when combined with the site: operator. For example:

allinanchor:"BCU library"

→ will find any page with links to the BCU library website.

filetype:

You can search for documents that are available online based on their file format.

Type filetype: followed by the file format with no spaces. For example:

filetype:doc

→ will search for MS Word documents.

* (asterisk)

In most search engines, the asterisk (*) acts as a wildcard, a placeholder for any unknown term. It will find the best matches for up to 5 terms. The asterisk wildcard works for whole words, not parts of words. For example: 

"how to * a car"

→ finds results that contain sentences such as how to drive a car, How to repair a car, How to buy a car, ...

Combining search commands

To refine your prompt, you can combine multiple commands in one line with a space or - between each command.

For example:

site:gov.uk filetype:pdf student allowance

→ returns all PDF documents on gov.uk which contain the words student and allowance.

AND

The search on Google is automatically an AND search. There is no need to include AND in the search.

OR

You can include OR to search for alternative terms. The word OR must be in upper case. Combining OR with the phrase searching technique can improve your search results. Example:

"heart attack" OR "myocardial infarction"

"heart attack" OR "myocardial infarction" symptoms

("heart attack" AND symptoms) OR ("myocardial infarctions" AND symptoms)

("heart attack" OR "myocardial infarction") AND (treatment OR medication)

"heart attack" OR ("myocardial infarction" AND treatment) OR medication

NOT

The minus sign (-) is the same as a NOT search, excluding words from your search results. For example:

property law -intellectual

→ Will find pages that contain both property and law, but not intellectual. 

AROUND()

This limits results to those documents where your first keyword appears within a certain number of words of keyword 2. For example:

symptoms AROUND(3) "heart attack"

→ Will find pages that contain both the phrase "symptoms of a heart attack" and "heart attack symptoms".

Numerical value searching allows to specify a number range such as years.

YYYY..YYYY

Separate the two values by two full stops. For example:

allintitle:"parkinson's" literature review 2024..2025

→ 2024..2025 will limit to the this date range the search for literature reviews whose title include "Parkinson's".

before:YYYY/MM/DD and after:YYYY/MM/DD

You can also limit to before or after a specific date. The date format is: YYYY/MM/DD. For example:

• before: 2010/12/31 would bring back results before that date
• after: 2020/01/01 would bring back results after that date

Example:

"leadership styles" nursing after:2020/01/01

Rather than searching all content, you can narrow your results to one content type, such as images, videos, news, web, maps, books, flights, finance, etc... 

After selecting a content type, you can select more search tools to narrow your results such as by country or by the date a page was published. The tools can change depending on the type of content. Here are some examples from Google Search and DuckDuckGo.

Google

In Google Search, the Web filter shows only search results without the AI summary or suggested content. In google, click the Tools button to reveal more options.

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo has an option to prioritise results from a specified country.

Saving your settings

You can save your preferred language filter, privacy and other settings. You can also choose whether to keep on the safe search option which removes explicit text, images and links from your search results display.

Google: Click the cog icon (quick settings) in the top right corner or your account icon if you are signed-in.

DuckDuckGo: Click the cog icon (Change search settings).

Most search engines have a results page tailored for images: enter keywords and select the images filter. Google also has a link to Google Image on its homepage for the same results.  

Filter images by format

Both Google and DuckDuckGo include image tools allowing you to further filter your search by:

• Size: icon, small, medium, lager, wallpaper, ...
• Colour: black and white, dominant colour, transparency, ...
• Type: clip art, photographs, line drawings, animated GIFs, ...
• Layout: square, tall, wide

Filter images by usage rights

You can filter your results to find images that offer licences for reuse:

• On Google, search for an image.
• Then click Tools.
• Use the Usage rights filter to find images that have licence information attached to them.
• You can filter the images to those with a Creative Commons licence.

Google filters images by licence based on information provided by the sites that host those images, or the image provider, as an indication. You should always double-check an image's usage rights on the source page. There is advice on using images on the copyright subject guide.

Display an image details

With Google you can find image details for each image you find if the image owner provides it or if there’s data about the image’s origin, such as image credits, copyright and licence details, attached to the content:

• Search for an image
• Select an image so it displays in the image viewer
• You may need to click on three dots to see more actions.
• Select About this image.

About this image provides details of the pages that contain the same image. It also provides information about when the image may have first been seen by Google which gives you a clue to its approximate age.

Reverse image search

You can learn more about an image with Google Lens. For example, you can take an image of a plant and use it to find results for objects in the image, for similar images or for websites containing the image or a similar image. 

There are various ways of searching with images:

Upload an image

• Click the camera icon in the Google Search box to open the Google Lens dialog.
  
• Select a file, then selecting an image and choosing open or choose
  or
• Drag and drop an image from your computer.
  

Search with a URL

• From the website containing the image you are interested in, right-click on the image and copy the image link.
• You can then paste image link in the Google Lens dialog and search.

Use the contextual menu in search results

• Right-click on the image you are interested in and use the search with Google Lens option to display results in a sidebar.
  or
• Right-click on an image you are interested in on a website and then use the visual search option to find similar images.