MSN Search Commands-Marketing Grade

The following are MSN Search Commands that you can use to refine your MSN searches and get detailed information about your competitors such as which sites are linking to them, related sites, etc.

Command	Meaning:	Example:
+	Finds pages that contain ALL the terms before and after the + symbol.	Rosebowl + parade
"	Finds the exact words within the quotes	"Matchbox Cars"
\|	Finds pages that contain either term	rain \| precipitation
-	Excludes pages that contain a certain keyword or phrase	spam - email
( )	Finds or excludes pages that contain a group of words	(Windows) \| (PC) or (Windows) -(glass)
&	Finds pages that contain all of the search terms	day & night
AND	Finds pages that contain all of the search terms (same as &)	day AND night
NOT	Excludes pages that contain a keyword or phrase (same as -)	(spam) NOT (e-mail)
OR	Finds pages that contain either term or phrase (same as \|)	(rain) OR (precipitation)

Search Command:

Meaning:

What to type in the search box (with example):

Contains:

Finds sites with links to a certain file type.

music contains:wma

This would return pages related to music with WMA files.

filetype:

Finds sites in a certain file type (html, txt and pdf).

dogs filetype:pdf

This would return pages about dogs in pdf format

inanchor:
inbody:
intitle:
inurl:

Finds pages with the search term in the text of the anchor, body, title or URL.

inanchor:fish inbody:fish inbody:fish

Any of these 4 commands would return pages with The word fish in the related type of text (body, anchor, title or URL)

ip:

Finds sites that are hosted by a specific IP address.

IP:231.54.432.256

This would return sites hosted on that IP address

language:

Returns pages in a specific language.

"deja vous" language:en

This would return pages about deja vous in English

link:

Returns who links to a specific domain. Great to research your competition.

link:msn.com

This returns site’s linking to MSN.com

llinkdomain:

Finds sites that link to any page within a domain.

linkdomain:msn.com

This would return sites linking to any page within MSN.com

loc:
or
location:

Limits your search to a specific region or location.

protests (loc:US OR loc:GB)

This would return sites about protests from the U.S. or Great Britain

prefer:

Adds emphasis on either a word or another operator.

football prefer:organization

site:

Returns web pages that belong to the specified site.

site:yahoo.com

This would return all of the pages for Yahoo indexed by MSN.

feed:

Finds RSS or Atom feeds on a website.

feed: www.latimes.com

This would return pages on latimes.com with feeds

url:

Finds whether a site or Web address is listed in the MSN index.

url:microsoft.com