[SITE:] is the most widely used Google advanced operator. It has multiple possible uses and can help a bunch in a SEO Site Auditing and link building. Let’s see how you can use it.

For Website Diagnostics:

Use [site:yourwebsite.com] to see how many URLs have been indexed by Google and how they are rates. Being a useful website heath indicator, the [site:] command has a couple of bugs though:

1. Google makes it very difficult to see more than a small part of the search index: it lets you see only the first 1,000 pages of any domain.
2. For some reason, Google [site:yourwebsite.com] may be inaccurate showing you much fewer pages than it really stores in its index (especially for huge sites).

To solve the above issues, use either of the following tricks:

• Search for pages indexed in each sub folder of your sites: [site:yourwebsite.com/folder1] + [site:yourwebsite.com/folder2] + [site:yourwebsite.com/folder3] + etc.
  Digging deeper always returns more accurate results.
• Use other restricting search operators to get more specific results, e.g. [site:yourwebsite.com inurl:keyword1] + [site:yourwebsite.com inurl:keyword2] + etc (for subdirectory specific keywords)

SITE: operator can also be a useful indicator of website canonical issues: if your website uses www as the main destination, such search as [site:yourwebsite -inurl:www] will show if Google has indexed any of URLs without www.

SITE: command can also be used to identify the most powerful or most relevant page of a website. Type [site:yourwebsite.com keyword] to find the page(s) Google considers to be the most relevant to the term you specify.

Note: you can also use this command for other Google services, like Google Blog search, Google Images, Google news, to see how your site is doing there.

For Link Building:

[site:TLD] search will restrict results to a top level domain you specify. This will enable you to find non-profits or educational sites with a potential to get a great link back. Consider these link building queries for example:

keyword sponsors site:org
keyword sponsorship site:org
keyword sponsor charity site:gov
keyword “suggest url” site:edu
keyword “suggest site” site:edu
keyword “suggest website” site:edu

For Reputation Management:

With [site:yourdomain] operator you can not only restrict search to a particular domain or top level domain, you can also exclude it from the search results. This comes particularly handy for reputation management search when you need to find external mentions of your name or brand name:
[Your Name -site:yourwebsite.com].

Combined with the date range advanced search (to find most recent name mentions) and SERPs tracking tools, you will be able to keep track of every single mention of your name.

To Search Any Website:

Most websites have either limited search abilities (no advanced search, for example) or no search option at all. Some websites can be searched only after registration (e.g. multiple forums). In all these cases Google SITE: operator turns out to be really useful. I for one don’t even care to try to locate a search option when visiting any site (even the one owned by myself). For me it’s much faster and more convenient to type SITE: in Google and get most relevant and fresh results.

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by Ann Smarty, an SEO and social media consultant and blogger.

Photo credit: Mazda6 (Tor)

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