Google Search Operators -- 8 Popular and Useful Commands

Understanding how websites interact with Google is the key to SEO. Google offers site owners a number of different search operator commands called operators that can help them monitor their websites and their SEO progress. These Google search operators and commands are simple to use and are just plugged directly into the standard search box.

Here are some useful SEO tasks that site owners can complete using a few simple Google search operators.

Check how many pages have been indexed

To use Google search operators to check for indexed pages type [site:yourdomain.com]. For example, at BrightEdge we use [site:BrightEdge.com].

Knowing how many pages Google has indexed is important for making sure that each page of the site is capable of showing up on SERPs and driving traffic to the website. If all of the pages have not been indexed it might indicate a number of different situations such as:

• problems in the backend of a website, such as the robots.txt having User-agent: *Disallow:/
• 404 HTTP Status codes which means the page cannot be found
• a very low pagerank - which will limit the number of pages Google will crawl
• server problems that keep the spiders from reaching your content

With Google search operators, you can also dig deeper into your subdirectories by including the names of subdirectories or folders in the domain you search. For example, you can search for [site:http://www.brightedge.com/products/]. It can also be helpful to exclude particular subdirectories, such as [site:brightedge.com/products/ -inurl:www]. This can allow you to get a better idea of where the different articles are living within the website.

Find competitors with Google search operators

To find sites that are similar to your website, you can type [related:yourdomain.com]. REI would use [related:REI.com].

It can be very helpful for companies to analyze exactly what websites are commonly cited with them and who might be considered their competitors. This will allow you to compare how you and these competitors rank for certain keywords, where their sites might be stronger or weaker than yours, and where you need to improve to outrank the other sites.

Finding sites that link to yours with Google search operators

Use the command [link:yourdomain.com] to find websites that link back to your domain.

Backlinks are a known factor that add authority to websites and thereby influence SEO. While backlinks from quality websites can be excellent for SEO, it is possible for backlinks from poor websites to hurt your site’s reputation. Although Google assures site owners that it would be extremely difficult for competitors to hurt another’s webpage through spammy links, few people want to take that chance. If you find that spammy pages are linking to your website you can easily disavow the links.

Check for duplicate content with Google search operators

Use the Site:yourdomain.com to find all the indexed pages on your website. Then scroll to the last page on the list and look to see if Google has placed their duplicate content warning at the end:

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the XXX already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

If this warning appears, it means that Google has detected some duplicate content within your site. Click the link to pull up the duplicate pages and begin to look through them to identify where the problems lie.

You can also run a search for suspected duplicate pages specifically by typing in, [site:yourdomain.com allintitle:keyword phrase] or [site:yourdomain.com allintitle:keyword * phrase]. In the second example, the * denotes an unknown word, allowing Google to search for the keyword phrase in any form that it might appear in the title.

Many websites with a duplicate problem will discover that they have had both www and non-www pages being indexed, or pages appearing in multiple subdomains.

Duplicate content can disrupt SEO rankings and make it harder to track the success of a website. When there are two pages that display the same content, the search engine has to decide which page is more relevant. This will hurt the page’s ranking.

Find pages most relevant to a keyword with Google search operators

To find the pages most relevant to a specific keyword, type [site:yourdomain.com keyword or phrase]. This will bring up the websites that are most relevant to a particular keyword phrase for which you would like to rank.

Armed with this information, you can adjust your marketing and SEO strategies to account for keyword relevance. It can be used in situations such as:

• If you are trying to rank higher for specific keywords, you know which pages will have the best chance
• If you are organizing content for specific buyer personas, you can sort through the pieces you have written related to different keywords that persona would find relevant
• If you are running a paid advertising campaign for a specific keyword, you know which pages on your site will be most relevant to the people who click on the ad.

As powerful as Google search operators can be, BrightEdge takes this analysis to the next level. While Site: will show you your pages indexed that day, BrightEdge visualizes this data in the Coverage Report, providing historical indexation insight into both your website and your competitors.

BrightEdge also goes beyond simply showing your indexed pages with Data Cube. Simply enter your domain, sub-domain or directory into Data Cube, and you will see all the pages that are ranking, along with the keywords they rank for and their estimated traffic (Data Cube Score). This analysis works just as well for competitors and can even provide rapid gap analysis against any two websites.

BrightEdge also provides a far more robust view into your links than Link: or Allinanchor: can provide. Within Recommendations, you will find page level link data, including number of back links, Domain and Page authority and more, all compared against same metrics from the top 10 competitors for any particular keyword.

BrightEdge SOV also provides more insight than related: by showing you the top competitors for any particular set of keywords, along with the keywords they rank for, the on page elements and industry standard SOV for the entire competitive landscape.

Other helpful commands

Google mentions a few other commands that you might find useful as well. To see what a website looked like the last time Google indexed a site use [cache:yourdomain.com]. To see the information that Google has stored about a website, such as similar pages, pages that link to a site, and cached versions of the site use [info:yourdomain.com]. To find pages that use one of several words use OR as in [site:yourdomain.com keyword 1 OR keyword 2]

Google search operators and site commands can be valuable tools for monitoring SEO and content, but the BrightEdge platform can help you understand and visualize at a point in time and over time.

Over the past few years, the value of social media platforms has exploded. When Facebook began as a social platform for college students in 2004, few people anticipated that—just over a decade later—social media platforms would be such an important factor in online marketing and search engine optimization.

Companies have found social media platforms to be excellent places to acquire customers and build brand loyalty. An estimated 77% of B2C companies and 43% of B2B companies have found customers through Facebook. Another 34% of marketers have sourced customers from Twitter.

Social media platforms have become the world’s water cooler, where people exchange ideas and discuss what they want to see from their favorite brands. Social media marketing, then, is the art of using that information to connect with potential customers, build relationships, and ultimately grow companies to new heights. Social Media is a channel to find and develop influencer marketing strategies.

Understanding the different social media platforms

Social media is not one-size-fits-all. There are different audiences that frequent the various social media platforms, and they each expect to interact with different types of content from their favorite brands. It is important to take the different atmospheres to heart and allow them to guide everything from a company’s profile to its target audience. Brands should use their buyer personas to guide the types of content they promote and the social media platforms where they need to focus their efforts.

Facebook - estimated 1.3 billion active users

Facebook received its start as a social site for college students. Although it has expanded far beyond its original restrictions, it has maintained its more light-hearted atmosphere. Companies tend to fare best when they post a variety of different types of content, from fun memes to informational posts that educate readers and encourage informative conversations. It is generally best to keep posts under 250 characters — if they get too long, you risk losing engagement. Include images and ask open-ended questions to inspire conversation.

Twitter - estimated 288 million monthly active users

It is best to think of Twitter as one giant conversation. Posts have to be less than 140 characters, but it is best to keep them under 120 so that your posts can easily be ‘retweeted.’ You will want to use #hashtags to call attention to the topics you are discussing, so that your posts are easily searchable. Pictures can also be fantastic for attracting attention on Twitter.

LinkedIn - estimated 300 million active users

LinkedIn is the network for professionals, and that is reflected in everything about the platform. The people on the platform are most interested in content that relates to them professionally, so any articles you post should take this into account. You want to promote pieces that encourage industry-related thought and conversation.

Google+ - estimated 300 million active users

When it comes to local SEO, Google+ is golden. It is generally recommended that brands publish a variety of different types of content on this platform as well. Images, educational content, and even videos can all perform well.

Understanding social media platforms and site performance

Social media platforms offer brands the chance to connect directly with their audience and leverage that connection to move them through the sales funnel. Success with social media platforms require more than just establishing a profile and posting a few times per week. The purpose of a social media marketing campaign is to build a strong community around the brand that will:

• Establish your company as an industry leader
• Encourage followers to trust and then buy from you
• Expand your brand reach
• Build brand loyalty

To accomplish these goals, it’s essential to devote time to building your social profiles and marketing campaigns — as well as monitoring their success. Keywords should be used on the social profiles because they are indexed by Google, but also because it will make it easier to find your brand through internal searches on-platform.

Programs like BrightEdge make it easy to see how well a social campaign is performing and how successfully it is interacting with SEO. You can easily track social SEO metrics, such as applicable keywords, to see where your pages can be improved to attract more visitors and improve your social media success.

Although many companies like to track basic social media metrics, such as the number of followers on various social media platforms, it tends to be far more beneficial to track metrics that look more closely at the level of engagement those followers have with your page. Look at statistics such as:

• How often your followers comment on and share your content
• The number of likes your content receives
• The number of people who enter the sales funnel through social media sites
• How often people who find your company through social media end up converting

These are the types of statistics that will give you insight into how well your social media is expanding your brand reach. As your campaign progresses, you will be able to use the social media platforms to drive more organic traffic toward your content, which helps boost your brand and site reputation. In turn, this will improve SEO value and position your company higher in search rankings.

Social media marketing is a fantastic tactic that gives brands the platforms they need to engage with the modern digital audience. Considering that over 70% of online American adults use some form of social media, these social media platforms offer an unparalleled opportunity to interact with potential customers. Properly leveraging these sites can help you take your marketing campaigns further, connect with new consumers and expand your brand reach.

2015 is off to a tremendous start with massive innovations delivered to our 1,200+ customers around the globe. As we continue to ship new technology at breakneck pace, I thought that it would be useful to explain how we select what we build. Oftentimes technology companies build and leave people without the context of what they are trying to do and why it matters to customers and the market as a whole.

At BrightEdge we are passionate about using our technology and innovations to empower our community and elevate their impact. This driving passion led us to develop some of our most innovative capabilities this year, including Story Builder, Anomaly Detection, Landing Page Optimizer, Content Optimizer and more. All of this technology is designed for one single reason – to help elevate our customers’ business impact and to elevate their position within their organization.

We know that our business is only as successful as we make our customers, so all of this technology is designed to do just that. Let me explain the goal behind each of the capabilities that we’ve delivered this year:

Story Builder–just like it says, this innovation is designed to help our customers tell their story and demonstrate their business impact across their organization. It’s so much more than dashboards and charts, it’s about measuring and proving the results that you deliver every day. And because Story Builder is uniquely able to show actual business metrics like revenue, conversions and traffic via Page Reporting, you won’t be sharing guestimates and bad data. Our goal is that every one of our 20,000+ users take advantage of Story Builder to tell their story and elevate their position in their organization.

Anomaly Detection–this breakthrough capability is designed to save you time and do the work for you. At BrightEdge, we think there are too many marketing technology companies creating too many screens that merely automate processes by forcing marketers to click through wizards all day long. Given that we have actual business metrics via Page Reporting and best in class data we realized that we had a unique opportunity to empower marketers and save them time by having our technology do the work for you.

Content Optimizer–Two years ago we delivered content optimizer because we and our partner Adobe saw a huge gap–most content that brands were creating wasn’t generating any business impact. We delivered Content Optimizer with Adobe to bridge the gap between the content authoring teams and the optimization teams to generate more performance from content. Today we have over 50 household-name companies that are elevating their impact by using this innovative technology. So that’s why we built it all, now let’s take a look as our CEO, Jim Yu, explains the game-changing technology BrightEdge has delivered so far this year.

In our mission to elevate our community, we recently added several new capabilities that will help to make marketers’ business impact better understood and appreciated.

We have built on our groundbreaking StoryBuilder technology that allows you to share your search and content story and elevate your profile in the business. Increased flexibility means customized graphing, year-over-year comparison and even more metrics, including Share of Voice and Weighted Rank. StoryBuilder is now easier to use and more powerful with new templates, filtering capabilities and seasonality comparisons. View Video

Real-time custom notifications allow you to celebrate success and detect anomalies to elevate your profile as you deliver business results. With Anomaly Detection, you can now be notified of relative competitive performance with Share of Voice rules that will trigger notifications when there is a significant shift relative to the competition. Monitoring your performance just got easier with the ability to be notified when there is a significant shift in business performance, so you can respond promptly. View Video

With Data Cube, understanding the impact of your mobile results is easier than ever. Elevate your organization’s understanding of mobile performance with full support for Google US Smartphone, including mobile Data Cube Score and Mobile-Friendly metrics. Tracking your progress before and after the April 21 mobile algorithm update is now at your fingertips along with summary metrics, rankings and other key insights. View Video

At BrightEdge, our most important value is customer success. This year has been all about elevating our customers’ success for both the business and themselves. We have accelerated the pace of our technology innovations, and we are just getting started. Stay tuned for more! And one more thing… join the BrightEdge community at Share15, the industry-leading event by digital marketers for digital marketers. Find out more about becoming involved in the BrightEdge community and share peer-to-peer insights with many of the world’s leading brands.

 

SEO is constantly evolving, and most recently, Google has shifted their algorithm to have a heavier focus on mobile-friendliness. One of the new elements that is part of this shift is mobile app indexing. Let’s take a closer look at what mobile app indexing is, what it means for SEO and how to index a mobile application.

What Is Mobile App Indexing?

Mobile App Indexing is an SEO tool which allows businesses to index their app content, so that it can be found when people place search engine queries on Google from mobile devices. The tool was created by Google and is meant to reward businesses that index their apps with higher search ranking results. This is part of the shift to accommodate the now 60% of U.S. web users and growing amount of users around the world who access the web through mobile devices instead of PCs.

If a user with your app installed searches for a relevant query using their phone, Google can show a link directly to the content within your app. If the user doesn’t yet have your Android app installed, Google can show an install button for it.

Why Mobile App Indexing Is Needed

App indexing is being implemented to create a more integrated mobile experience online. For businesses, it allows for more sales and opportunities because it will direct customers into their apps and can send them directly to purchase pages. It helps mobile web browsers to access content specifically designed for mobile, which is seamless to navigate on their smartphone or tablet.

Take for example a person who searches for a dinner recipe on their phone. They may have forgotten they downloaded an app months ago for healthy recipes. Google can now provide a recipe which is within the app they already have in their results or may prompt the searcher to install a new app to access a recipe.

Meet Mobile Demands

As alluded to mobile app indexing will make web browsing more convenient for users and more profitable for businesses who design applications accordingly. Mobile users will benefit from the results that include a whole new segment of information from applications, which are made specifically for mobile.

Stay Competitive in Search Rankings

Having applications which link to your website can have a seriously positive impact on your search rankings. Google considers mobile app indexing a positive sign of engaging customers. The content provided is considered unique from the website and of incremental value. As a result both the website and app are seen as more valuable.

More and more businesses will start to put their focus on application development simply to stay relevant in the search ranking results and to ensure that they stay ahead of the competition.

Chances that your competition is already using applications to get their mobile ranking up is quite high, so it is advised to stay on top of this trend in order to be a valid competitor.

Drive More Engagement

Many businesses have struggled to get users deep into their applications. They may get a download or a user, but many features and pages go unseen. Now, valuable content can be indexed and crawled by search engines, which will then direct users to relevant information throughout the app. This is called deep linking, and will increase the level of engagement users have within applications.

Additionally, just by having apps coming up in search results, they will receive more interactions organically.

Seamless User Experience

User experience is also increased for mobile users, since they will not see any annoying splash screens, advertisements, prompts or login screens. Users now get immediate access to the content they are after, which is made for mobile.

How to Do Mobile App Indexing?

In order to ensure that your application is properly indexed, you need to:

1. Enable app indexing in your mobile application
2. Add deep links on your website
3. Next step is to connect your app to your website
4. Then verify and make sure the app is set up to work with Google Play services

It is essential to prepare website content and verify your setup to ensure that everything is in working order. Here is an example of the Movoto app indexed.

Enable App Indexing in Your Mobile App

To set up your Android app indexing, you need to add intent filters to the application manifest. You will also have to restrict access to certain content you do not want to include in your index. Your Android developers are the best resources to get this step done.

Add Deep Link Support in Your Website

Entering deep links is quite easy. To do so, you can use the “<link>” element in the head section of a page. Another way to enter deep links is using the <xhtml:link> element on the sitemap or use the schema.org for ViewAction.

I personally find adding <link> element inside <head> section to be an easier option for our site Movoto.com. Here’s an example code for one of our detailed property pages:

<link rel="alternate" href=" android-app://com.movoto.movoto/http/www.movoto.com/app/opendpp/sacramento-ca/8105-aztec-way-sacramento-ca-95843-100_81467116/" />

Add the App Indexing API

Before the app indexing can commence, you will also have to add the app indexing API. To do so, update your project by ensuring that the project includes Google Play Services. Once this is done, you will have to update the project configuration as well.

Verify Your Apps Official Website

Next, you will need to verify your website before the application indexing can be executed correctly. To verify your website, please do the following:

1. Sign in on your Google Play Developer Console
2. Click on all applications
3. Select your application
4. Click on services & APIs
5. Click on Verify website and enter the website address
6. Return to Google Webmaster Tools
7. Click on all messages
8. Click on approve
9. Review all the information before approving

Testing Mobile App Indexing

 

Google provides a cool deep link testing tool which lets you add deep link URIs in a "test box" to generate a QR code that you scan using an Android barcode scanner app. This should open a browser page with a link. When you click on the link on your phone, it should open the deep link you have entered in the text box.

Check for Errors in Webmaster Tools (now called Search Console)

Checking for errors in the Webmaster Tools/Search Console is also a necessity, since any mistake in the setup can have direct consequences for your search ranking. Be sure to always double-check the Search Console before taking advantage of mobile app indexing.

Mobile app indexing is quite useful for many businesses, having the potential to seriously boost sales. When it comes to Google algorithms and the direction they are heading, it is all about providing meaningful content that truly helps customers. Mobile applications are another way to provide information people want in an easily accessible way. By taking advantage of the opportunity to index your mobile app, you are widening your audience and exposure, while potentially providing mobile customers with your information that they are looking for. This can help improve traffic, increase sales and deepen customer engagement.