The internet is a big place and there are tons of information on it. When you search for something online there are various pages that match your search in one way or the other, and the search engine gets a little confused on what results to bring out.
Hence, it makes this decision by combining multiple factors like your location, popularity of topic being searched and even the device you're using to carry out the search.
With Google Dorking you can tailor your search results for your specific queries and avoid unnecessary clutter in your google search.
What is Google Dorking
Google dorking is a search technique that involves using specific terminologies and symbols on the google search engine to better optimise your search results and tailor them to your specific needs.
Here are a couple of Google dork commands to help in your search queries, and an example to better understand how they work.
Common Commands
Quotation mark ““
Encasing your search query in quotation marks ensures only pages that have that exact wording are suggested and not just any page that might just have one similar word or more.
Here’s an example of how this works.
Let’s say you’re searching for jolie metal on Google.
This is an example of how your page will look like. There’s some stuff about jolie metal leaf, but also some completely unrelated stuff like Angelina jolie’s chin, and some champagne bronze stuff, whatever that is.
Putting your search query in quotation marks like this “jolie metal” ensures that you only get results that have that exact phrasing and not just random pages that have the individual words jolie or metal.
Hyphen -
Are used for exclusion so putting -food when searching for something will bring out results for all pages except those containing something related to or having the term food in it.
Now, you’ll notice that most of our results from the search above have the phrase “jolie metal leaf”. Let’s say I have no interest in that and I want it to bring out only pages that do not have the word ‘leaf’ , all i have to do is add -leaf, so the search query becomes “jolie metal” -leaf and now none of our results have that word anymore.
Knowing and implementing these commands when browsing on Google can completely transform your search experience and reduce the amount of time wasted scrolling through search results till you find what you’re looking for.
Here are a couple more advanced commands to learn, though this command aren't as commonly used as the one above, it doesn't hurt to know them.
Other Commands
inurl:http
This is a little more advanced command that might be particularly interesting to cybersecurity folks. It brings out all pages that run with http as opposed to those run with https as connections over http are insecure and can easily be hacked.
allintext:password ---
This brings out all the pages that contain the keyword password anywhere in the text.
filetype:log
This command is used to specify the filetype you'd expect your search query to be in.
after:2024
The year could be any year of your choice. This command tells the search algorithm that you only want results of pages that have been published after the year 2024.
Resources
Pagoda is an opensource software that stands for passive dorks and can be setup on the computer to run in the background as constant using of google dorks might lead to your search queries being rejected by google.
Here's a video you can watch to learn more about this.
Conclusion
Though this might look basic and simple, implementing these commands make a lot of difference when searching for things online. You can read other articles and look up videos on this topic to better understand Google Dorks and know when to use them.
Also, feel free to check out more of my articles here, and connect with me here on hashnode or on twitter.