TwitterGitHubLinkedIn

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

  • Limit search to a single domain site:Microsoft.com

  • Filter specific subdomains site:Microsoft.com -site:www.microsoft.com

  • Filetype: limits search results to a specified file type site:domain.com -filetype:html

  • Ext: useful for discerning programming languages used ext:jsp, ext:cfm, ext:pl

  • Intitle: can help identify pages with specific titles or content Intitle:”index of" "parent directory"

Important links

PreviousOSINT toolsNextSock puppets

Last updated