Google dorks – search shortcuts you must know today
These google shortcuts are also called as google dork queries. This post tells what exactly a google dork is, how it can be used to increase our search productivity and also how we can make use of google dorks to check vulnerabilities in the websites.
What exactly is a google dork?
Google dork is a search query which uses advanced search operators to find information that is not readily available on a website.
The results returned by the google dork queries are normally difficult to locate through simple search queries. So these queries are used by hackers to find advanced data about websites which is not intended for public viewing, leading to easily get website vulnerabilities.
How could google dork queries help us?
So using google dork queries we can get the results right away without spending much time on searching using various queries. For example, i would like to get a PDF on the topic ‘Best SEO practices’ using the google search. For this we need not to search for ‘Best SEO practices PDF’ and then visit the search results and look for PDF output files. Instead of this we can directly search with google dork query as shown in the example below. From the query, Google understands that you are looking for PDF output format on the topic ‘Best SEO practices’, hence it directly lists all the matching results which are in PDF format. So on click of the result will directly open/download the PDF without visiting the website.
filetype:pdf Best SEO practices
List of some useful google dork queries:
filetype/ext: You can directly ention the fileformat you are looking for using this. I you are looking for some data(say SEO tips) in pdf format you can restrict the output file format as pdf as shown in the below example.
Ex: [filetype:pdf seo tips]
Filetype: doc | pdf | xls | txt | ps | rtf | odt | sxw | psw | ppt | pps | xml
link: This will list webpages that have links to the specified webpage.
Ex: link: www.logicalfeed.com
info: This would show information google has about that webpage.
Ex: info:www.logicalfeed.com
site: Restricts the search within the particular site which we have mentioned. The below query searches for google dorks in logicalfeed.com website only.
Ex: site:www.logicalfeed.com google dorks
inurl: If this is included in search query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing any of the search terms in their URL
Ex: inurl:logicalfeed sitecore
allinurl: If this is included in search query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing all the search terms in their URL
Ex: allinurl:logicalfeed sitecore
intitle: If this is included in search query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing any of the search terms in their title
Ex: intitle:logicalfeed sitecore
allintitle: If this is included in search query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing all the search terms in their title
Ex: allintitle:logicalfeed sitecore
define:
Ex: [define:kewl]
related: This will get the matching webpages to that of the website mentioned. The below query would list the web pages matching with www.logicalfeed.com.
Ex: related:www.logicalfeed.com
stocks: Everything mentioned after the ‘stocks:’ is taken as the stock ticker symbol, and hence it will show the matching pages. The below example, show the results matching the stock ticker symbol GOOGL.
Ex: [stocks:GOOGL]
cache: Using this, we can search a string in the cached version of a website. The website URL should be mentioned right after the ‘cache:’ without any space as shown in the below example.
Ex: [cache:www.logicalfeed.com sitecore] – In this example, google will search for the string ‘sitecore’ in cached versions of the website www.logicalfeed.com.
Some search strings to find vulnerable websites:
Below are some of the search queries which can be used to find advanced data about the webite through which you can find the vulnerable websites. The search strings to find vulnerable websites is not just limited to the below list but there are thousands of queries formed by dork queries combined with various search terms.
inurl:index.php?id=
inurl:article.php?ID=
inurl:pageid=
inurl:newsDetail.php?id=
inurl:show.php?id=
inurl:trainers.php?id=
inurl:play_old.php?id=
inurl:games.php?id=
inurl:gallery.php?id=
inurl:staff_id=
inurl:php?=id1
inurl:buy.php?category=
inurl:declaration_more.php?decl_id=
inurl:page.php?file=
inurl:article.php?id=
inurl:newsitem.php?num= andinurl:index.php?id=
inurl:article.php?ID=
inurl:pageid=
inurl:newsDetail.php?id=
inurl:show.php?id=
inurl:trainers.php?id=
inurl:play_old.php?id=
inurl:games.php?id=
inurl:gallery.php?id=
inurl:staff_id=
inurl:buy.php?category=
inurl:declaration_more.php?decl_id=
inurl:page.php?file=
inurl:article.php?id=
inurl:newsitem.php?num=
Pranay
A Software Engineer by profession, a part time blogger and an enthusiast programmer. You can find more about me here.
