Google Power Search: How to Search Just One Web site

There’s a lot more you can do with Google than just search the Internet. Instead of searching the entire Internet, you may be more interested in seeing search results from just one web site. To do this, go to http://www.Google.com and enter the word “site:” followed by a colon (:) followed immediately (with no space) by the web site’s address. Next, add a space and then the word(s) you wish to search for. It should look something like this:

site:xxx.com search-term

Notice the web site’s address is given without the letters “http”, without the colon, without the slashes and without “www.”

For instance, perhaps you only want to search the web site of the Indiana Genealogical Society at indgensoc.org to see what databases the society has for Pike County, the county where your ancestors lived. To do so, go to http://www.Google.com and enter:

site:indgensoc.org “Pike County”

Note in the above example I placed the words “Pike County” inside quote marks. That isn’t absolutely necessary but does tell Google to narrow the search down and to display only web pages on the indgensoc.org web site that contain the word “Pike” followed by a space and then followed by the word “county.” No other variations are allowed. (Upper and lower case is ignored, however.)

Notice that all results displayed point to the indgensoc.org web site and to only the web pages that have the words “Pike County” in them. The words “Pike County” are also shown in bold text.

Another use might be when you decide to buy a new scanner and you vaguely remember seeing an article some time ago in this newsletter about scanners. You go to http://www.Google.com and enter the following:

The results will look similar to this:

Again, all results displayed point to Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter and to only the web pages that have the word “scanner” in them.

This is a great way to find an article that you read a long time ago on a site, and want to find it again. Sometimes Google Search works better than an embedded search right on the website itself.