People often ask, what is the “site command” or “site operator” on Google? #NERDALERT. There are some tricks on how to search Google for SEO purposes. The “site operator” can tell you whether, and how frequently, your site is indexed by Google. Let’s investigate!
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WHAT IS THE SITE OPERATOR OR SITE COMMAND ON GOOGLE?
First, what is this nerdy thing called the “site operator?” It’s a way to search Google for content from a specific website. For example, if you type into Google site:jm-seo.org then Google will tell you the content it knows about on this website (jm-seo.org). Try it. It works for any website, even Twitter as in site:twitter.com. It tells you generally about a website, and how many pages are in Google. But wait! There’s more!
DIGGING DEEPER INTO THE SITE: OPERATOR
Second, you can use the site operator to learn about your relationship with Google. Let’s use these examples –
- Quantity. Try site:jm-seo.org – then look at the quantity. Top left – about 638 pages indexed. This tells us Google has indexed about 638 pages, so they are “eligible” to rank at the top of Google.
- Frequency. Next, click on TOOLS (top right) and then ANY TIME > Past Month. This tells you how frequently your content is being indexed, or what content Google has recently discovered. You can go down to past hour or past 24 hours. You want Google to index your content! So this is a way to see if it’s coming back to your website or blog for new content on a regular basis.
- Find out if a specific URL is indexed. You can take a specific URL and type it in to see if Google has indexed it. For example, I recently wrote a post on ‘Google Ads Credits‘ and I can see if Google has indexed this post by typing site:https://www.jm-seo.org/2020/04/google-ads-credits/ into Google. So, yes it has indexed this content.
- Compare www vs. non-www format. You can also use it to compare your “non WWW” format vs. your “WWW format,” as in site:jm-seo.org vs. site:www.jm-seo.org. You want one and only one “preferred domain,” so this allows you to verify that you’re in good shape (i.e., the numbers should be the same or nearly the same).
FIND YOUR STRONGEST PAGE FOR A KEYWORD
Finally, you can use the site operator to query Google as to what is the “strongest” page on your website for a given keyword. Few people realize this is possible. I like to do this to see if a given landing page is the “strongest” page on my website for the matching query. For example, I have a popular page on free Google AdWords Coupons and I want it to be the “strongest” page on my site for that query. So, site:jm-seo.org “Adwords Coupons” tells me that it is (because it ranks #1).
OK, nerds! Start using the Google site operator / site command and learn whether Google loves you (or not).
