Google has many advanced search operators.  Over the years I’ve found lots of great information by digging just a little deeper with these extra queries.  I’ll break them down below:

allinanchor:
Starting a search with this string will restrict results to pages containing the terms you  specified in the anchor text of links on the page.  A search for allinanchor:seomike will return only pages with the word “seomike” in a link somewhere on the page.

allintext:
This query makes Google show results containing the text you specify.  For example, a search for allintext:seomike kansas city will display pages that contain the text “seomike” “kansas” and “city.”

allintitle:
This query will make Google display only the pages which contain the text you specify in the title of the pages.  The title is what is displayed at the top of your browser, and usually as the blue link in the Google search results.  A search for allintitle:seomike will produce only pages that have “seomike” in their titles.

allinurl:
Allinurl Google will display results containing all the words you entered in the page or site URL.  For example a search for allinurl:contact seomike will deliver www.seomike.com/contact.html.

book:
This query allows you to search the text of a book.

cache:
The query chache: plus a URL will display Google’s cache of a webpage.  For example, cache:www.seomike.com will display Google’s cache of my webiste.  You will also be able to see the last time Google cached my page.  TIP: you can check the “text-only” version of the cache to see if a website is doing any Google Cloaking.  (Google Cloaking means displaying something that only Google will see and is a blackhat technique. Usually the only way that you can see if a website is cloaking is by checking Google’s text cache.)

[city] [city]
By entering two cities right next to each other you can search flights between those cities.  For example. kansas city washington dc will allow you to search flight times between the two cities on a date range you specify.  It’s pretty much useless because all it does is send your request to a third party site anyway.  Might as well start there.

define:
You can check for Google’s definition of a word or phrase by starting a search with this query.  A search for define:seo will show definitions.

filetype:
Filetype has to be one of my favorites.  You can find all kinds of things with this query.  One thing that is particularly interesting is to run this against a competitor’s website searching for files that shouldn’t be there such as PSD, DOC, XLS, etc.  For example, If someone uses a “production” folder on their site to collaborate with a designer but doesn’t delete the directory or block it with robots.txt, you can get all kinds of production notes, design drafts, memos, email addresses, phone numbers, etc.  You might even find a site redesign in progress.   This is a really sneaky little trick and if you’re reading this, congrats – you found a little golden nugget of electronic corporate competitive intelligence collection.  I won’t tell you the exact query that makes this happen, but you can figure it out from this list.

info:
The info query is a little lame.  It just displays the Google listing for a website.  Check it here: info:www.seomike.com

intext:
The intext operator will display all documents that contain the text you’re looking for.  If you further modify the query by adding quotes around your search phrase, you’ll get an exact match.  An example of this would be intext:”browser ubiquity testing” which returns a bunch of my blog entries on the topic.  Without the quotes, the results are littered with barely relevant results.  I find this query works best with the quotes.

intitle:
The operator intitle restricts the results to only pages that contain a specified word in the page title.  Remember, page title is defined in the TITLE tag and is displayed in the top of your browser and as the blue link in Google.  For example, you can find every page where I discuss browser ubiquity testing with this string; “browser ubiquity” intitle:seomike Without the quotes Google will pull pages with either word of the phrase and the whole phrase.  In this example I wanted pages that list exactly “browser ubiquity.”

inurl:
Using this query will restrict google results to a certain website which contains the specified search term in the URL.  For example, inurl:seomike will display all pages that contain “seomike” in the URL.  You can further hone this query by including a specific website to search like this: inurl:seomike site:www.dmoz.org which will return any pages with “seomike” in the url.

link:
The query link: is awesome.  It shows a list of links from third party websites to the site you specify.  However, the info presented is often used in link development so Google doesn’t display a complete list of the links they know about.  An example query would be link:www.seomike.com.  Notice that the list isn’t very long.  I know for sure, from Webmaster Tools, that Google is aware of far more links than they are displaying.  If you need this information about a competitor for your link building campaign, you can go to Yahoo and use their linkdomain: command.  Unlike Google, Yahoo tells you everything they know.

location:
I’ve been leaving out queries that only work in Google News and Google Groups, but this one is kind of fun.  I am not sports fan – in fact I hate basketball – but there is a great example of this functionality right now.  A query in Google News for lebron james location:cleveland returns news articles on lebron from sources in cleveland.  Similarly, lebron james location: miami will show you what news sources in Miami are saying about him.  It’s a fun example because there’s so much anger in Cleveland, but so much love in Miami.

movie:
The movie query doesn’t function like it did originally when it was announced in 2005.  When it first came out you could input a string like movie: man talks to horse and it would look through all the movies that ever were to find ones with that kind of subject.  It was great because you could search for movies with sweet car chases or dog fights and Google would make suggestions for movies you might like to see.  Now, the movie query only seems to respond with current films and displays results for theaters nearby playing that movie.

phonebook:
The query phonebook is pretty fun because it will display all results of publicly available phone numbers  it knows.  A fun query is; phonebook: george bush tx which comes up with George W. as the first result.  I didn’t have the guts to call it, but feel free.  I did check the location on Google Maps and there is no data listed.  This happens sometimes with “high value” people… their stuff isn’t on the map.  It may be his number, it may not be.

related:
The related query will show a list of websites that Google thinks are related to your website.  This can be a pretty interesting way of judging your content and external link optimization efforts.  Is Google getting what you’re telling it?  A search for related:www.seomike.com shows that Google believes that my website is related to SEO by displaying other SEO websites in the listing.  Good job Google.

site:
The site query is a very useful tool.  The results displayed are a list of the pages that Google is aware of for a website.  It’s also interesting to see how Google ranks the pages against each other which, with a little investigation, can tell you a lot about your content optimization and link building efforts.  You can also tell if Google is having a lot of trouble accessing your website.  site:www.seomike.com shows a list of all the pages on my website.

weather:
The weather query is pretty straightforward.  This search is most effective when used in combination with your zip code.  weather:66211 will show you the weather for us today.

This has been quite a long post.  Thanks for hanging in there.  Remember, there are lots of combinations of the queries above that will work.  You just have to play around with them to refine your search until you get exactly what you’re looking for.  Happy hunting!

Want a downloadable copy of this article?  It’s available here: Google Advanced Search Query List.

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The Postcard Google Will Send You (Click for Larger Version)

You have two options to claim your listing, Google can mail a postcard to you which takes about two weeks, or they can try calling the phone number THEY have on file for your business.  If you have a client and you’re trying to claim their local listings for them, you’d better first take an inventory of the information Google has about the locations and confirm that the client can be reached by those means.  Also, make sure that if you’re using the phone option that someone at the location is aware that the call is going to come in.  The phone option only works well when one person answers the phone 100% of the time.  If the client has a phone system that “hunts” it’s best to just mail a postcard and wait.

I’ll be talking more about local search in the future including what you can and cannot change, how the search engines go about finding your company information, the differences between Google, Yahoo, & Bing, as well as how you can get the most out of your local listings.

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During all this controversy Google applied for a patent the technology used to snoop out those unencrypted networks.  I don’t think they are sorry.  Turns out that Google is getting into the WarDriving business.

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I have a client that needs to run analytics using two accounts on the same website.  There are many reasons for this kind of implementation, but the most common reason is to setup tracking for multiple third-party marketing firms so each can define their own filters, conversion goals, user funnels, etc.  Unfortunately, the implementation of the additional account ID on my client’s site was not correct and it “broke” analytics for the other account.  One account had good data, the other account couldn’t keep track of the users.  This is because the way the code was written, one tracking cookie was being overwritten by the other, and the one associated with the account being overwritten was reading 99% bounce rate, 0.00 time on page, and could not follow users into the site.

Since some of the posts discussing this topic online are a bit technical, I thought I would post an easy-to-understand version here.  I’ve placed the correct code below with examples of how you add additional account ids to a website without breaking the analytics.

Using Multiple Accounts With Asynchronous Tracking

You can see in the image that I’ve input multiple account ids. (UA-XXXXXXXX-X)  Each new id starts with a new letter (b._, c._) and you can continue this for as many analytics accounts that you want to hook up to your site.  Remember, the more accounts you connect, the slower the pages will load so I suggest keeping the number of accounts to a minimum.

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“The Chrome operating system will be centred around the web browser, with all software including high-end applications such as those used in photo and video editing housed in external servers known as a cloud.”

So what exactly will your computer be doing?  Accessing everything “out-there” putting all of your files in someone else’s hands.  You will also need to run apps, like on android phones, to access services.  The real challenge to this kind of model is the fact that a Google OS based computer will be a fancy paper-weight when there’s no internet access.  I keep going back to the rumors I’ve been hearing for years about Google getting into the wireless business.  It would be nice for them to have a strong mobile phone platform, a mobile computing platform, and then jump into offering cut-throat rates on wireless broadband / wireless phone service.  Big brother keeps getting bigger…

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Up until the recent algorithmic change, SEOs have been complaining about the power of big brands. Big brands dominated the search index because of the power of their domains. (reputation, links, trust, etc) It was as if they could post anything they want and almost instantly rank #1 for that term. Google was paying attention.

The algorithm change that was launched in May has been dubbed the “Mayday” update because many folks are convinced that it’s a mistake and that Google will roll it back. I doubt it. I think they are right on the money with this one. Instead of relying on powerful domains and solid internal linking structures for ranking pages, the individual pages are now standing on their own. It makes sense – just because you’re a big brand doesn’t mean that you have a document that’s more important than another sites’ document. For example: A document on a less important site (compared to a big brand) may be more useful to a searcher (and have the same number of links) compared to a page with less useful information ranked solely upon the power of a big brand root URL. Now it seems that those two documents are being compared as equally viable competitors instead of one document being from Beverly Hills and one from Starkville Mississippi. (sorry Rob, best hillbilly town I could think of)

Some people are honestly freaking out about “massive losses of traffic” on their “authority sites.” Well, they’ve been turning out crap for content and getting it ranked based solely on the power of their domains. This change in Google might root out some in-house SEOs that over-sold their experience and qualifications and have been coasting by based on the power of their big brand. They’d better get with the program and get back to basics fast or they might find themselves on the street.

Has this affected me or my clients? You bet. We’re getting more traffic! Why? Because I believe in a solid SEO campaign based on what I call the Keyphrase Pyramid. My Pyramid starts with the very long-tail of search. We start building content and links for that long-tail and then as time goes on we keep building upon that wide, deep base with higher and higher value keywords until we reach the top one or two big performers. As the content and links grow and we capture more popular phrases, traffic expands exponentially. This little update has just compressed the timeline it takes to increase traffic. If you take the time to build a strong base of content and links, you won’t go wrong. If there’s anything that I’ve learned in my 13 years as an SEO it’s that content is king, links are queen, and slow-and-steady wins the race every time.

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The plan is to have the appliance, TVs, and satellite boxes ready for a pre-Christmas launch in order to give it the best possibility of success. Expect a massive conventional marketing campaign from these heavy hitters.

The platform will be based on the Android operating system and come with the Google Chrome browser. YouTube is also in the mix planning on releasing a new product for viewing videos on big screens. Existing Android apps will work on the platform and allow an Android phone to control the system. I expect the functionality will be very similar to the relationship between my iPhone and my AppleTV. GoogleTV will also allow for a wireless keyboard and most. They could make navigating the web on GoogleTV super-easy by introducing a remote similar to the Wii remote.

One of the biggest features – at least to me – is the fact that the GoogleTV appliance will support Flash. That’s a big dig on Apple amid recent controversy over their lack of support for Flash.

Bridging the gap between the internet and the TV has been extremely challenging. Every attempt to blend the two technologies has seen less than enthusiastic adoption. Sony’s Playstation, Microsoft’s XBOX, the AppleTV, all have access to the internet but none of them have gotten it exactly right. The GoogleTV seems to be on the right track. However, it’s unknown if people will leave their computer for the TV to view the internet.

What may hurt proliferation of GoogleTV? Lack of Apps. Adoption might be a little lack-luster, especially if the appliance has a high price tag. It’ll be even worse if there aren’t many apps for the platform. There probably won’t be many apps until late in Q1 of 2011 since the SDK (software developer’s kit) isn’t scheduled for launch until early 2011.

One last point about GoogleTV… If it takes off it’s likely going to put a huge strain on websites. Delivering TV-quality video is no small feat. We may see a resurgence of user-agent based content delivery, not out of malice, but out of necessity. Why would a large video site waste all their bandwidth delivering TV-quality videos and images to every device. Also, why would a site deliver a watered-down experience to every user because the GoogleTV needs to have one mode of navigating the site, pre-selection of expected navigation, and limit vertical scrolling. (See Google’s tips for designing websites for GoogleTV) Sites are going to cloak, and Google’s going to have to be ok with that.

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Google Trends offers a good look at year-over-year data for search volume.

Google Trends can be a very effective tool for planning your SEO campaign if you know how to use it.  The tool is a great way to look for seasonality and “burstiness” of topics online, which is especially important to review if your client has season-related products.  Using Google Trends you can establish a target date where your campaign needs to come to fruition, which allows you to allocate your resources appropriately in order to reach your target.

Google Trends can be a very effective tool for planning your SEO campaign if you know how to use it.  The tool is a great way to look for seasonality and “burstiness” of topics online, which is especially important to review if your client has season-related products.  Using Google Trends you can establish a target date where your campaign needs to come to fruition, which allows you to allocate your resources appropriately in order to reach your target.

As an example, I’ve used the terms “lawn mower” and “snow blower” because they obviously have very season-related sales.  You can see in the image below the year-over-year number of searches for the two terms.  You can see that “lawn mower” peaks around May of every year and then drops off as the season wears on.  If a client sells several seasonal items, you can see the importance of using the time leading up to May to prepare for the peak lawn mower season.  You can also see in the image below, that searches for “snow blower” peak in December – January of a given year and is subject to bursts of traffic related to major snowfall.  Another good use of this tool, beyond seasonality is illustrated below; the ability to measure one phrase’s popularity against another.  This is a good way to evaluate some of your long-tail phrases.

Google Trends offers a good look at year-over-year data for search volume.

In the image above you will also notice a couple of other really important things; rankings of states and cities.  This information can help you specifically target your PPC campaigns to cities and states where the most searches for your items occur.  Another important thing you can see is the ability to export the results to a CSV file which allows you to present your own graphics and charts outside of the Google tool.  This is great if you are doing research for a client and want to brand your results as your own.  Don’t worry too much about the alphabetized article results displayed to the left when you are looking at a huge period of time as in the image above.  These links point to news stories that will give you a very small glimpse into what items and on this scale, much of the content is dead.

In the image below we’ll look at 2009’s trends related to these categories.  You can get a little deeper look at a single year’s trends like this as well as looking at which cities and states performed the best for a given year.  You can get a solid peak month for your campaign by using the single year view.

The Google Trends yearly view of results show seasonality in detail.

The single-year results can also be exported to an CSV file to allow you to play with them in Excel.  Earlier I said you should ignore the alphabetized article results on the left, but in this case these articles can be of use.  If you click the “more news results” link you’ll be taken to a page where you can see the articles that trended throughout the year.  This will help you determine market-factors that drove the number of searches and find out what was going on in the industry to help explain the search volume.  You’ll be able to find seasonal trends like the effect of huge snow storms on snow blower searches, and the effect of drought in regions on lawn mower sales.  When the grass doesn’t grow, sales go down.

One last thing I’ll mention about the “more results” is that there is more data here than meets the eye.  Since Google has been indexing offline content such as newspapers and books, you have a deep look into information going all the way back to the 1800s in some cases.  Though data from that far back is probably not relevant to today’s market, it is very interesting to see.

Google Trends shows mentions of items in offline material.

To sum up, there is a TON of data available to the SEO in Google Trends if you know what to look for.  You can offer a wealth of information to your clients to help them see why you want to focus on certain campaigns leading up to the busy season.  They will better understand why you want to focus so much effort on organic SEO for “snow blowers” in the summer instead of when they are selling.  The more the client understands the data behind your online strategy, the more likely they will value it as a part of their company’s strategy, instead of just a “bolt on” curiosity.

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Last month the city of Topeka, the capitol of Kansas, officially changed it’s name to Google for a month in an effort to attract attention and win the bid to be the first city where Google tests their ultra-high speed internet service.  In an April Fool’s Day response, Google changed their name to Topeka.

The April Fool’s idea that made me smile most was that the Google Employees lined the street in front of the Mountain View CA headquarters.  Check out the screenshots I took with streetview:

I also spotted a guy in the crowd with a marriage proposal sign:

Another amusing aspect of Google’s April Fool’s Day shanagans, is the fact that all of their search response times have been changed to other units of measure like (2.00 shakes of a lamb’s tail).  Here’s a list of the response times I recorded:

• 60.35 jiffies (interesting because this appears to be calibrated correctly.  A jiffy about 1 millisecond, and Google’s usual response times are 6-8 milliseconds.  So, the response time of 60.35 jiffies is equal  to about  6 milliseconds.  Nice Google)
• 0.74 times the velocity of a unladen swallow
• 0.23 centons
• 0.07 nanocenturies
• 1.22e-15 epochs
• 23.00 skidoo
• 0.22 microfortnights
• 0.19 centibeats
• 0.26 microweeks
• 2.00 shakes of a lamb’s tail
• 0.32e+43 Planck times (interestingly a jiffy used to mean Planck time)
• at 5.21 hertz
• 1.21 gigawatts
• 11.90 parsecs
• 0.02 femtogalactic years

Another funny thing Google did on April Fool’s 2010 is post a promo saying that you can store anything on Google Documents, even your car keys.  “Ever wish you could CTRL+F your keys?”

Other Google April Fool’s pranks that get an honorable mention:

• Google Maps in 3D
• Google Books in 3D
• Google standard voicemail
• Google Translate for Animals (offered on google.co.uk)

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