Use Google to Search Within a Single Website

Narrow your search to a single website with this tip

Key Word Search
chris sadowski / Getty Images
by Marziah Karch
Updated June 11, 2018

You can use Google to search a single website when you are confident the information is on a specific site but don't know where to look to find it. You may remember that you saw a great recipe on a magazine's website but don't remember the issue. Sometimes the site itself may have a problematic internal search. Either way, it is often faster and easier to search for a key phrase and specify that you only want results from a specific website.

How to Search Within a Specific Website 

Use Google's site: syntax followed by the website URL to restrict your search to find only results within that single website.

  1. Click in Google's search field.
  2. Type site: followed by the website URL you want to limit the search to. Make sure there's no space between site: and the website address.
  3. Follow the website URL with a single space and then type the search phrase.
  4. Press Return or Enter to begin the search.

You don't need to use the http:// or https:// portion of the website's URL, but it doesn't do any harm if you include it.

Examples of Site Syntax

If you want to search Lifewire for an article on power search tricks, enter the following into a Google search bar. 

site:lifewire.com power search tricks

It is usually better to use more than one word in your search phrase to narrow the search results. Searching for something like "tricks" or "search" is far too general. 

The search results that are returned include any article from the Lifewire website that concerns search tricks. The Lifewire results are followed by results from other websites.

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

site:.gov seized property ohio

If you know the specific government agency, 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.