Internet, Networking, & Security > Browsers 196 196 people found this article helpful How to Use Google to Search Within a Single Website Start your search with 'site:example.com' to narrow in on just one site By Marziah Karch Marziah Karch Writer Michigan State University Emporia State University Marziah Karch is a former writer for Lifewire who also excels at Serious Game Design and develops online help systems, manuals, and interactive training modules. lifewire's editorial guidelines Updated on November 27, 2020 Reviewed by Jon Fisher Reviewed by Jon Fisher Wichita Technical Institute Jonathan Fisher is a CompTIA-certified technologist with more than 10 years of experience writing for publications like TechNorms and Help Desk Geek. lifewire's editorial guidelines In This Article View All In This Article Step-by-Step: Search in One Site Run a Domain Search When to Do This Close What to Know Type site: and then the domain, like site:lifewire.com. Then, include your search.To search by domain extension, type something like site:gov or site:ai, followed by your search. 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. 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. 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. Press Return or Enter. The results will include any article from the website that concerns search tricks. The 24 Best Google 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 That's not the end of the story. The site: trick can be mixed with other Google Search commands, such as Boolean searches. 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. How to View Blurred Text on Websites Was this page helpful? Thanks for letting us know! Get the Latest Tech News Delivered Every Day Subscribe Tell us why! Other Not enough details Hard to understand Submit