Advanced Filters –
Searching by web address
by Paul Myers, BBC Training & Development

When you use a popular search engine like Google, you are browsing an index of over 3 billion web pages. These come from a many different of sources, and despite clever keyword selection, you will often have to pick your way through pages of irrelevant “hits”.

Domain Relevancy

• You might be searching for academic information about the medical condition “catatonia”, but instead end up with pages about the pop group Catatonia. 
• You might want government reports about “genetically modified food”, but your search gets drowned in hits from private companies, educational institutes and campaign groups. 
• You might want BBC pages about Buffy the Vampire Slayer but your search gets obscured by fan sites. 

If this sort of thing is happening to you, it might be a good idea to take advantage of web addresses. 
Every web address reveals something about its owner. 

For example most BBC pages have the domain name bbc.co.uk. 

All British university pages are found on the .ac.uk domain. 

Search engines allow you to specify which domains to search for your keywords. 

Address Relevancy

Just as a pages subject may be reflected in its title, you can often tell what a page is about by looking at its address. You don't need to go into www.bbc.co.uk/teletubbies to know that it is the official BBC site about the Teletubbies. Newspaper archives often have a date in their "url" (web address) and useful "quick facts" pages will often have "faq" (frequently asked questions) in their address.

Just as you can search for pages from a specified domain name, you can also search for pages with content across the entire web address.

Address Search Examples
Search engines have differing syntax . For example, Google's "site:” command will allow you to search for keywords on pages hosted on a specified domain (e.g. bbc.co.uk).   

Altavista’s "host:" fulfills the same function, but their url: command searches the entire address (as does Google’s “inurl:” syntax). It also allows you to limit your search to the last part of a domain name (e.g. “UK”) by using the “domain:” command.

Google

"buffy the vampire slayer" site:bbc.co.uk finds all the BBC pages about Buffy

inurl:faq buffy finds pages with FAQ in the address and the word "buffy" - great for finding quick information about a subject

allinurl:images hydrogen finds pages with images of Buffy

Altavista

megastore host:virgin finds pages from Virgin about their Megastore

url:jobs url:gov.uk will find UK government sites' job sections

morrissey domain:za finds South African pages about Morrissey

To perform effective address searches you need to know a domain name or country code. You can find a domain name using conventional search techniques and you can look up country codes using sites listed in the research links section of this site.