Use Google to Search Within a Single Website

Narrow your search to a single website with this tip

by
Marziah Karch
Marziah Karch
Writer
Marziah Karch is a former writer for Lifewire who also excels at Serious Game Design and develops online help systems, manuals, and interactive training modules.
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Marziah Karch
Updated on November 27, 2020
reviewed by
Jon Fisher headshot
Jon Fisher
Lifewire Technology Review Board Member
Jonathan Fisher is a CompTIA certified technologist with more than 6 years' experience writing for publications like TechNorms and Help Desk Geek.
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Article reviewed on Feb 15, 2020
Jon Fisher

What To Know

  • In a Google search, type site: followed by the domain and extension, like site:lifewire.com. Then, include your search, and press Enter.
  • To search by domain extension, type site: followed by the extension, like site:.gov followed by your search, and press Enter.

This article explains how to use Google to search within a single website or type of domain. It can be extremely useful when you are confident the information is on a specific site but don't know where to look to find it. You can also limit your searches by a certain domain extension, like .gov or .edu, which can be extremely useful if you're doing research or looking for reputable sources.

How to Search Within a Specific Website 

To search within a specific website, you must enter the search following the rules that Google recognizes for such a search.

  1. Click in Google's search field.

  2. Type site: in the Google search bar followed by the name of the website you want to limit the search to. There's no need to use the http:// or the www. part of the site name, but you must include the .com or .org or another domain name. Make sure there's no space between site: and the website address. For example: site:lifewire.com

  3. Follow the website name with a single space and then type the search phrase. For example:

    site:lifewire.com power search tricks

    When you want to search a website for an article on a specific topic, it is better to use more than one word in the search phrase to narrow the search results. Searching only for "tricks" or "search" would be far too general in this example. 

  4. Press Return or Enter to begin the search.

    Google site search.

    The results will include any article from the Lifewire website that concerns search tricks.

How to Search a Single Domain

Usually searching an entire domain casts too wide a net, but if you are searching for government information, for example, you could search just within .gov sites by entering only the domain for the name. For example:

site:.gov seized property ohio

This site search is confined to all the websites in the .gov domain.

If you know the specific government agency, it is better to add it to filter your results further. For example, if you seek tax information results only from the IRS website, use:

site:IRS.gov estimated taxes

That's not the end of the story. Google's site: syntax can be mixed with other search syntax tricks, such as AND and OR searches. 

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