: Different results in searching Google "site:" using a space or not? Why do I get different results when I search Google for our site? No space used. "site:www.av-iq.com" produces 747,000 results

@Shelley277

As you have found, these are two different searches. As per the Google help docs:


Don’t put spaces between the symbol or word and your search term. A search for site:nytimes.com will work, but site: nytimes.com won't.


Without the space, the site: operator is applied to the stated domain, so only results within that domain are returned.

Whereas, when space separated, you now have two search phrases site: and example.com. And the search clearly returns results from multiple websites, not limited to the stated domain. All sites that simply reference example.com (and many variations of) are returned in the search results.

The results are even more exaggerated when literally using the example.com domain.


No space used: site:www.example.com - no results!
Space after operator: site: example.com - 1,142,000,000 results.

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