Google's pretty good at surfacing relevant content based on your search query. Just sometimes y'all need something and then specific that a general keyword phrase doesn't actually do it for y'all, especially if you're a marketer on the hunt for a particular piece of content.

That'due south where a site search comes in handy.

A site search is performed on a search engine and allows you to search one domain – not the entire internet – for a term.

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We'll talk more about why site searches are helpful and how to perform them in the sections below.

How to Google Search Inside a Website using Site Search

1. Go to Google.com.

Site search google step 1: Go to google.com

two. In the search box, enter site:world wide web.website.com with your search term.

Site search step 2: type in the search bar: site:www.website.com/ search term

Make certain you consider the domain and subdomain when performing a site search. For case, if I search the term "SEO" on www.hubspot.com and world wide web.blog.hubspot.com/marketing, I'll go two different sets of results.

The start will bear witness results that include all the subdomains while the latter will only show results pertaining to the weblog subdomain.

Site search Google example

The same goes for the path: www.hubspot.com/nearly will provide unlike results than www.hubspot.com/pricing.

With this in heed, it'due south of import to know where you're looking for your search term.

iii. Refine your search.

For instance, in Stride 2, I searched our web log for a wide topic: SEO. Various subtopics came upwards, ranging from SEO blogging strategies to tips from SEO experts.

From there, I can filter my results by topic or fifty-fifty date.

In the example beneath, I added "2021" to my search time to refine my results and get more contempo data.

Site search step 3: refine your search

Site Search Best Practices

When it comes to a site search, a good rule of pollex is to get-go wide and narrow downwards fiddling past petty.

This will brand it easier to find what you're looking for and avert narrowing down too early. For example, say you lot desire to search a competitor'southward site for SEO-related content.

Commencement by looking up SEO to meet the range of subtopics they cover. From in that location, y'all can dive into each subtopic and examine which ones they cover more than and which ones they don't cover much.

This method volition help you find ideas for your ain content and get competitive on the SERP.

Now, say you're on the opposite stop – you have a website and desire to make site searches easier for your visitors.

In ecommerce in particular, site searches are very important, as they aid consumers detect the products they're interested in.

In this case, here are a few tips:

  • Categorize your content on the backend to make search results more authentic.
  • Apply autocomplete and autocorrect to assist visitors when typing into the search box.
  • If the query yields no results, offer related queries the user may exist interested in or direct them to elsewhere.
  • Optimize the terms on your site to reflect the linguistic communication of your target consumers. For example, say you sell baby items and your core audience resides in the UK, your website would likely use the term "cot" instead of "crib."

How Site:Search Tin can Make Your Life Easier as a Marketer

In that location are many use cases for this tool, but here are the most common ones.

  • Search for data – I like to employ data to support and strengthen my content. With a site search, I can quickly detect a stat I had read in an article weeks or months before. I can perform a search on our own blog or other sites I visit, similar eMarketer, for instance.
  • Search for new topic ideas – Permit'due south say you want to pitch an article idea and verify that your angle hasn't been covered before on your site. Y'all tin do a site search and read all the articles relating to the topic. If you're a freelance author, yous can too take this approach before you pitch a story to a publisher to make sure it's original and aligns with their content strategy.
  • Surface related content to link to – If you want to link to a piece of content within your own content, a site search is a bully way to resurface it or even find some new pieces of content you didn't know existed.
  • Conduct competitive analysis Reviewing your competitors' content is plays a big role in developing your content strategy. A site search will let you to come across how your competitors are covering specific topics, from the bending to the length and use of media.

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Originally published Aug 17, 2021 12:xv:00 PM, updated August 17 2021