There are literally dozens of advanced Google tricks, but below we have put together a list of Google tricks that every attorney should know.

Google is an amazingly valuable tool, but most people use only about 1% of its capabilities.

Some of these tricks might be familiar to you; others may not. But the magic starts happening when you start combining these advanced searches to form some really complex searches.

So, without further ado, here are some tricks to get more out of your Googling.

1) Exact phrase

Of all the advanced search tips, this is the one almost everyone knows, and it’s easily the most useful query. Enclosing a search phrase in double quotes will return only results with the exact phrase you are looking for. This is especially useful when conducting searches on individuals such as witnesses, plaintiffs or defendants who have a common name.

If you Google a person’s name without the quotes, Google assumes that you want the words to be close together, but it doesn’t force the words to be together, which would give you more pointed results.

But the quotes can be used for more than just searching for a name. For example, if you are trying to confirm that Brian Willingham attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, you can search:

“brian willingham” “amherst”

Here is an insider tip that you might not have known: If you really want to dig into a person’s background, there are six ways you should be searching a person’s name.

For example, if you wanted to dig up information on me, Brian Willingham, the author of this article, here are six ways I would be doing it:

“brian willingham”

“brian” “willingham”

“willingham, brian”

“B. Willingham”

“Willingham, B.”

“brian * willingham”

Using all of these cases allows for the possibility of the name appearing in multiple ways: together; separated; last name, first name; first initial, last name; last name, first initial; or with a name in between (like a middle name).

This may seem repetitive, tedious and duplicative, but it’s not.

If you do the searches above, you will get different results each time.

Some of which are pretty revealing ;)

2) Excluded words

Let’s say you are trying to find information about some guy named Brian Willingham, the private investigator based in New York. But some quick Google searches reveal that there are a couple of other pretty prominent Brian Willinghams, like the guy who wrote “Soul of a Black Cop,” who is a former Michigan police officer, or the Brian Willingham from San Francisco who is a real estate agent and was in the news several years ago because his husband was about to be deported.

If you wanted to filter Google to avoid these results, you could use a hyphen (functioning as a minus sign) to exclude words from your search:

“brian willingham” -“soul of a black cop”

Or

“brian willingham” -“deportation”

Or, if you wanted to get really advanced, you could filter everything by putting it in one search string:

“brian willingham” -“soul of a black cop” -“deportation”

3) Site-specific search

The site-specific Google search allows you to search a specific website for the existence of a particular term. So instead of searching the entire Internet, you may want to home in on one website.

For example, in your research on Brian Willingham, you may want to see 1) articles that he has written for Pursuit Magazine and 2) anytime he has been mentioned on Pursuit Magazine’s website. In that case, you would search:

site:pursuitmag.com “brian willingham”

You would quickly find an author page for Brian Willingham, which provides a list of articles written by Brian Willingham.

But it also provides you with links to pages on which Brian Willingham was mentioned. 

It also provides links to comments that Brian Willingham made, which can be extraordinarily valuable.

And nearly impossible to find otherwise…

4) “OR”

The OR search is used if you are trying to search with more than one term and would like for one or both of the terms to be found. The OR must be capitalized for the search to work correctly.

So if you wanted to search multiple name variations, you would enter something like:

“brian Willingham” OR “brian * billingham”

If you wanted to get really fancy, you could put all of the name variations in one string:

“brian willingham” OR “brian” “willingham” OR “willingham, brian” OR “B. Willingham” OR “Willingham, B.” or “brian * willingham”

5) Filetype

Utilizing the filetype search, you can avoid searching web pages and isolate your research to certain types of files, such as PDFs, spreadsheets, Microsoft Word documents and others.

How can this be helpful?

You may find references in annual reports, financial statements, business plans, curricula vitae, court documents or scanned documents (yes, Google is searching for words in documents too).

“brian willingham” filetype:pdf

In one case, several years ago, we were doing a filetype search for Excel spreadsheets on a company, and we found an entire list of employees and their contact information, buried on a website.

It was an absolute gold mine of information.

6) “AROUND”

There is a “secret” Google feature called the AROUND search, where you can search for terms near each other within a certain number of words. In other words, you can force Google to have two words near each other.

So if you wanted to only find results that have Brian Willingham within 20 words of Diligentia Group, you would enter:

“brian willingham” AROUND(20) “diligentia group”

The AROUND must be capitalized, and the 20 referenced above can be any number you want.

This can be helpful in cases in which you want to narrow down lots of results.

Or in cases where you are trying to link two parties together.

For example, if you were trying to link Brian Willingham to the Bernie Madoff scandal, you might try something like this:

“madoff” AROUND(30) “brian willingham”

7) INURL

This is a search that I have been using with much greater frequency over the past several years. This will find results in which the searched word only appears in the actual URL, not in the body of the text.

This is particularly helpful for finding social media profiles. For example, if you have determined that Mr. Willingham uses the apt handle “brianwillingham” on social media, you may do something like this:

inurl:brianwillingham

Or if you have figured out that Mr. Willingham really goes by the user handle “fedora_the_explora” you would do this:

inurl:fedora_the_explora

(Legal notice: We can neither confirm nor deny that Brian Willingham has used or ever will use the handle fedora_the_explora, and we can neither confirm nor deny whether fedora_the_explora is related to the “real” Dora the Explorer.)

8) Combination

THIS is where the magic happens.

You can combine these techniques above into really advanced Google searches. In really nerdy worlds, it’s called “Google dorking” or, in less nerdy worlds, “Google hacking.”

So if you wanted to find PDF files on the Diligentia Group website:

site:diligentiagroup.com filetype:pdf

If you wanted to see whether there is anything horrible out there about our friend Brian Willingham and wanted to find some low-hanging fruit, you might do something like this:

“brian willingham” (arrest OR assault OR attack OR bribe OR corruption OR criminal OR defraud OR fraud OR illegal OR indict OR investigation OR launder OR misconduct OR misrepresent OR negligence OR violation OR sanction OR terror)

Or if you wanted to get even nerdier:

“brian willingham” AROUND(20) (arrest OR assault OR attack OR bribe OR corruption OR criminal OR defraud OR fraud OR illegal OR indict OR investigation OR launder OR misconduct OR misrepresent OR negligence OR violation OR sanction OR terror)

If you wanted to find any PDF files that contain privileged and confidential information that is not for public release, you can do this:

filetype:pdf “privileged * confidential” “not for public release”

👀

Happy Googling!

Side note: While writing this, I found out a lot about myself that I didn’t know before ;-}

Dig deeper:

➔ Google Dorks on OSINTCurio.us

➔ Smart Searching with GoogleDorking

➔ Ethical Google Hacking Course

➔ Google Dorks List and Updated Database in 2021

➔ Google Search Operators: The Complete List (42 Advanced Operators)