How to Use Google to Search Within a Single Website

This article explains how to use Google to search within a single website or type of domain. These directions work from any device that supports Google searches.

How to Search Within a Specific Website 

It's easy to search by one website, but there is a trick to it.

1. Type site: in the Google search bar followed by the name of the website you want to limit the search to. Here's an example:

    site:lifewire.com
   

   Don't add a space after the colon, but do type the top-level domain (e.g., .com or .org). The HTTPS portion is also unnecessary.

2. 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 to narrow the search results. Searching only for "tricks" or "search" would be far too general in this example. 

3. Press Return or Enter. The results will include any article from the 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 top-level domain.

Here's an example where we are running the search on only GOV websites:

 site:.gov seized property ohio

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, type this instead:

 site:IRS.gov estimated taxes

When to Search Within One Site

A single site search eliminates all other websites from the results. When we're talking about billions of possible websites a search query could uncover, limiting the results to a single domain can be extremely helpful.

Imagine you're looking for some help setting up a security camera. You know the website where you bought it, so you want to search just that one site for their user manuals. Unfortunately, the website doesn't have its own search tool; just menus. To save time browsing through all the site's pages, you could use Google to search that website.

Similarly, limiting the search to a specific top-level domain helps keep the focus on the topic at hand. If you're looking for the next best AI tool, you might search only for .ai websites. Doing so immediately disregards all the .com sites that could overwhelm the results.