
Using Google to analyse your website and competition
Google offers advanced search to help build complex search queries. We look at some of the advanced search operators to carry out an SEO analysis of your website as well as that of your competition. Some of these are
site:yourdomain.com
This gives the number of pages indexed and displayed by Google in their search results.
link:yourdomain.com
Lists pages which link to your website. You can also give a particular URL. Use this number carefully and get data from other sources as well. Try Google webmaster, Yahoo! Site explorer etc. as Google deliberately shows limited data with this command.
related:yourdomain.com
This shows the websites Google considers similar to your website. It is a good way to see if your site is coming across correctly to search engines.
allintitle:keyword1 keyword2
Shows only those pages which have all the keywords in their Title tag.
intitle:keyword
Same as allintitle, but checks only for one word.
allinurl:keyword1 keyword2
Shows only those pages which have all keywords in their url. Good to see which sites are using your target keywords in their url.
inurl:keyword
Same as allinurl, but checks only for one word.
cache:URL
This will display the copy Google has of the queried url including the date. The current url content may have changed since then.
info:domainname.com
This will give you direct links for the cache, link, site and similar operators for that domain name