Tech

How To Use Google To Search A Single Website

Read in app
google io search demo lady
Kevin Smith/Business Insider

Sometimes you need to find stuff on the web and you basically know where to look: one particular website. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just search that one website?

Google has a secret feature called "site:" that let's you do exactly that. It's not a new feature. In fact, it's almost as old as Google itself. But some years ago, Google basically hid it. Today to search one site, you have to precisely type the "site:" command.

For instance, let's say you find to find all the listings for iPhone 5 on eBay. Or you want to search Microsoft's technical support pages to find out what's making your Windows PC slow. Or you're looking for a specific article you once read on the New York Times.

To search a single website.

1. Type "site:" into the Google search bar.

2. Type the name of the website you want to search, but remove the "http://" and the "www." Make sure you include the full name, including the .com or .edu. or .org.

3. Type the search term you are looking for.

So, to use Google to search eBay for the iPhone 5, your search would look like this.

eBay Google site search
Google/screen capture

 

Protip: click on the "Images" or "Videos" tab to find just photos or videos involving your search term on that single website.

So there you have it. The next time you get frustrated when looking for a single piece of information that you know is stored on a particular website, Google "site:" search is probably your answer.

Read next

Julie Bort was Business Insider's Editor at Large for the Tech team. She loves investigating stories and shedding light on the tech industry's most amazing people.Here's a small sample of some of Julie's work.Former Pinterest employees describe a traumatic workplace where managers humiliate employees until they cry, Black people feel alienated, and the toxic culture 'eats away at your soul'Sex, tequila, and a tiger: Employees inside Adam Neumann's WeWork talk about the nonstop party to attain a $100 billion dream and the messy reality that tanked itInsiders say WeWork's IT is a patchwork of cheap devices and Band-Aid fixes that will take millions to fixWeWork's toxic phone booths were created in-house by its Powered by We business70-hour weeks and 'WTF' emails: 42 employees reveal the frenzy of working at Tesla under the 'cult' of Elon MuskElon Musk works so many hours at Tesla, employees are constantly finding him asleep under tables and desksHow this woman went from a Pizza Hut employee to a founder of a $4 billion startupAn Oracle insider explains how some salespeople gamed the system to sell more cloudTHE TAKEDOWN OF TRAVIS KALANICK: The untold story of Uber's infighting, backstabbing, and multimillion-dollar exit packagesMicrosoft is in talks to buy GitHub, a startup at the center of the software world last valued at $2 billionThe alarming inside story of a failed Google acquisition, and an employee who was hospitalizedInside Facebook's plan to eat another $350 billion IT marketHow a registered sex offender wound up living in an Airbnb hosting unsuspecting guestsA controversial ex-banker is the person who really runs Twitter — and he's gambling the company's future on one risky betSecret passages and skipped meals: Oracle's CEO gave us a rare peek at what it really takes to run a $37 billion companyHP told some employees to choose between becoming contractors with no benefits or being fired without severance'I felt like we were being extorted': Customer says Oracle tried to strong-arm him into a cloud saleHow the queen of Silicon Valley is helping Google go after Amazon's most profitable businessAirbnb host: A guest is squatting in my condo and I can't get him to leaveLIES, BOOZE, AND BILLIONS: How one of the fastest-growing startups in Silicon Valley history raised $580 million then spiraled out of controlGitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart — and we have the full inside storyWhen she's not writing for Business Insider, Julie can usually be found on the trails, on my mountain bike, or on my skis, if you know where to look.