How to search for ":" symbol (without quotes) in Google

[mig1234]

I need to find pages that contain ":" symbol (without quotes) by searching in Google.

What search querry do I need to enter?

When I enter ":", Google ignores it.

[jimbeetle]

Hi mig1234,

Welcome to Webmaster World.

Yep, Google usually ignores punctuation, and in this case, even if you use a quoted search (":") it's going to refuse because you're basically asking it to return every page in it's index.

You'll have more luck if you can narrow down the search somewhat...

a +: (all pages with the letter a plus colon)

":" site:.com (all .com tld pages with a colon)

And, if you can excuse my denseness, why in the world do you have to find pages that contain a colon? The must be billions of them.

[Receptional Andy]

As far as I know you can't search for a colon (or any other punctuation) in Google, although I've wanted to do so myself in the past.

The 2 suggestions above are just searching for the valid terms and are ignoring the +: part (i.e. all pages with the letter a and all .com sites respectively).

[jimbeetle]

Looks like you're right on that. I didn't follow through all the way, only checked the first five results or so, and, of course, they all contained colons.

[mig1234]

I want to search for ":" because I want to find pages where I can submit my website url.

I want to find pages that contain words "title:" "url:" and "description:".

I need these words to be followed by ":".

If you have ideas how to search for them, then let me know.

[jimbeetle]

Oh, in that case, why not follow the two links to DMOZ that you'll find at the bottom of this thread:

[webmasterworld.com...]

And I'd also recommend checking out some of the other DMOZ search categories:

[dmoz.org...]

And, if it's submitting your site for link exchanges, you might want to do some reading at WW's Link Development forum...

[webmasterworld.com...]

...and some of the articles in its library:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Some quick tips to search for what you need might be phrases like:

YourIndustry directory
YourIndustry link exchange
YourIndustry web resources
Internet YourIndustry directory
Internet YourIndustry resources
Submit YourIndustry site
Submit YourIndustry link

And other phrases along those lines, substituting your site's business for YourIndustry.

[mig1234]

Jimbeetle,

Thanks for the valuable links.

If you have more ideas on the keywords I should use on Google to find relevant sites, please let me know.

My site is about memory improvement.

One of the last keyphrase I used was:

intitle:”submit site” education -dmoz

and it produced quite relevant results

[RBuzz]

For generally finding sites to which you can submit your URL, try this base search:

title url description (intitle:submit ¦ intitle:add)

then add keywords as you like.

[mig1234]

Thanks RBuzz,

This is a really good querry.

What does the "¦" symbol do?

[RBuzz]

Hi Mig,

¦ is for "or". You can also use OR if you like.

RBuzz

[mig1234]

RBuzz,

Thanks!

If you know more good querries, please let me know.