Search Engine OSINT

Search Engine Operators

Search engine OSINT is a collection of techniques that use search strings and operators to refine search queries. There are numerous useful operators that can be used to search for specific information about a site, domain, or company. These operators will differ for various search engines, the examples below apply specifically to Google.

• AND includes all specified keywords in query (cyber AND war)

• OR searches for the presence of one keyword or another (cyber OR war)

• " " searches for a specific pattern of words

• Site limits searches to a single domain. site:Microsoft.com

• Filetype limits searches to a specified file type. site:Microsoft.com filetype:php

  • You can also exclude specific file types using site:Microsoft.com -filetype:html

• Ext is useful to identify which programming languages are used on the site. site:Microsoft.com ext:jsp, ext:cfm, ext:pl

• Intext identifies pages with specific terms in the content of the page intext:"term to search for"

• Intitle identifies pages with specific titles or content. site:Microsoft.com intitle:"index of" or "parent directory"

• Inurl searches for specific terms in a URL inurl:"keyword

• Cache searches Google's cached pages. cache:Microsoft.com

Important links

• Google hacking database: https://www.exploit-db.com/google-hacking-database

• Google - https://www.google.com/

• Google Advanced Search - https://www.google.com/advanced_search

• Google Search Guide - http://www.googleguide.com/print/adv_op_ref.pdf

• Bing - https://www.bing.com/

• Yandex - https://yandex.com/

• DuckDuckGo - https://duckduckgo.com/

• DuckDuckGo Search Guide - https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/syntax/

• Baidu - http://www.baidu.com/