OSINT with Google – How to Use Google Search Operator Part 2

This is different article title but it’s the same content for my article before. This time I will continue to explain how to use Google search operator effectively as part of your OSINT investigation. Before, I talking about how to use quotation mark, file type operator, site operator, and related operator. Below we will continue talking about another operator hyphen, inURL, OR, inTitle, asterix, and range.

Google Search Operator

• Range Operator

“data leak” 2017..2018

The range operator is used when you want to search something between two identifiers. These identifiers can be number like years. For example query “data leak” 2017..2018 will return all pages that contain information about term data leak and years in 2017 and 2018. Of course, you can use this operator with another case.

• OR operator

“A or B” “A|B”

With OR operator we can use this to combine two different term that maybe you’re not sure at the beginning. Just like truth table, A or B is true when one them is true. When you searching for “A or B” it will return all pages that contain both term

• InTitle Operator

intitle:”data leak”

“InTitle” operator will return all website that contain term that includes in title of a article or pages. For the best case use this operator with quotation mark so Google will find the exact term that you looking. “intitle:”data leak”” will return all the pages or article that has data leak term in the title

• InURL operator

inurl:”data leak”

Another operator has the same function with InTitle but instead looking term in the title, it will search you’re the term specific only in the URL.

• Hyphen operator

data leak -facebook

You can use symbol (-) to exclude the following term after the hyphen. This is very useful to restrict all the term and get specific result.

Conclusion

Using search engine as a part of your OSINT investigation can be really useful. We can use this resource to get quick information at the beginning or maybe you’ll get all you need just by using the search engine. By the way, did you know you can combine the search operator to get more best result for example using combine inurl or intitle with hypen  and or operator. Please try to experiment more with the operator to get the best result. See ya 🙂