Reference
Search syntax
SearchWebCode matches your query against the raw HTML source of 131M+ homepages. Combine exact phrases with AND / OR / NOT logic, filter by TLD, or drop into full regular expressions. Every operator below also works in the search box, or build it visually.
Open the search box →Operators
Whitespace between terms means AND, every term must appear on the page.
| Syntax | Meaning |
|---|---|
| "exact phrase" | Match the string exactly, including spaces and punctuation, wherever it occurs in the source. Quotes are optional for a single word but required for phrases or anything with a space. |
| word | A bare single word (letters, digits, -, _; quoted or not) matches as a whole word, case-insensitively, never inside a longer one: tagmanager does not find googletagmanager, and 2380747294665477 does not find ca-pub-2380747294665477. For the substring reading switch to regex, /tagmanager/, or include the punctuation that pins it: ca-pub-2380747294665477. |
| a b · a AND b | AND, a space between terms requires both on the same page; the uppercase keyword means the same. "wp-content" "gtag" = WordPress sites that also load Google Analytics. |
| a OR b · a | b | OR, match pages containing either term. PublicWWW can't do this; we can. "cdn.shopify.com" OR "cdn.bigcommerce.com". |
| -"exclude" · NOT "exclude" | NOT, a leading minus (or the uppercase keyword) removes pages that contain the term. "wp-content" -"woocommerce" = WordPress without WooCommerce. |
| AND OR NOT | Keywords are operators only in uppercase. Lowercase and, or, not are ordinary words: terms and conditions searches for those three words, and "AND" in quotes is the literal string. |
| ( … ) | Grouping to control precedence. Order is NOT > AND > OR, so parenthesize to mix them: ("a" OR "b") -"c". A parenthesis glued to a term is part of the literal, not a group: jQuery(document) and [].constructor.constructor(atob) are each one string, exactly as source code writes them. A group needs a space (or the start of the query) before its (, and a term that opens a parenthesis claims the ) that balances it: (jQuery(document) OR $(document)) -"noConflict" groups, while (a OR eval() is rejected as an unclosed group. |
| site:tld | Restrict to a top-level domain. site:io, site:gov, site:com. (tld: is an alias.) It filters the top-level domain only, site:example.com is not a thing we can filter on, and says so rather than quietly finding nothing. |
| -site:tld | Exclude a top-level domain. "wp-content" -site:ru = WordPress sites, minus .ru. The minus binds to the filter, not to the next term. Several filters combine: site:com site:org is either TLD, -site:ru -site:cn excludes both, and the two kinds mix. |
| /regex/ | A regular expression over the source. /UA-\d{4,}-\d/ finds legacy Analytics IDs. Works standalone or as one term inside a boolean query. Both slashes are required, a bare path like /wp-content/themes is searched literally. |
| \" \\ | Escaping, to search for a literal quote or backslash inside a phrase, escape it: "say \"hi\"". These are the only two escapes; any other backslash is part of the literal, so "https:\/\/cdn.example.com" finds the JSON-escaped form exactly as written. |
Examples
Click any example to run it.
Coming from PublicWWW?
The core operators map 1-to-1, "phrase", space for AND, - to exclude, and /regex/ all behave the same. Two differences worth knowing:
- We add
OR(and|) for true either/or matching, PublicWWW has no OR operator. - We index one homepage per site (the front page).
ip:,filetype:, and deep-crawl operators aren't part of the standard tier; full-depth crawls are available on Enterprise.
Tips
- Longer, rarer literals are faster and more precise,
"gtag/js?id=G-"beats"gtag". - The result count is an approximate upper bound (a fast trigram estimate); the pages shown are exactly verified against live source.
- Use copy domains / export CSV on the results toolbar to pull the full match list.
- A query that can't match anything is rejected with a message rather than run and charged: an empty or whitespace-only phrase (
""," "), the empty regex//, a query whose boolean expression has no positive term (-"jquery",-site:ru,-"a" -"b"), or a danglingAND/OR/NOT. A positivesite:comalone is fine, it still constrains the set. "a" OR -"b"is rejected for the same reason: one arm excludes only, so the OR would match nearly every page.