Query Syntax
PublicWWW searches the source code of web pages, not the text visitors see. A query is the fragment of markup, script or stylesheet you expect to find - a tracker id, a library filename, a meta tag, an affiliate code.
Everything, briefly
"..."
Exact phrase - those words, in that order; other characters only separate
them. What you want almost every time. A tilde and a number let the words
inside move apart.
"math.min.js"
"gtag config"~5
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a b
Several words or phrases means all of them, in any order.
distance:n asks for them close together.
bootstrap jquery
fbq distance:5 init
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( | )
A bar matches either side; brackets say what the bar applies to.
jquery (slick | swiper)
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\"
A backslash escapes a quote inside a phrase, or another backslash.
"<html lang=\"fr\">"
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like:
Results in order of similarity instead of popularity: about a topic, in any
language, or like a given website.
like:"Tierarzt" site:de
like:jquery.com
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Only the Latin letters a-z, the digits 0-9 and the
underscore _ are searched. Every other character works like a
space - punctuation, accented letters, and the letters of other alphabets:
Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Chinese and the rest. Words written in other alphabets
are therefore moved into like:"..." automatically: similarity search takes words
in any language and alphabet and finds websites about that topic - see
Similar websites. To match the code itself, look for the
Latin traces a page carries - a transliterated word, the language in the
<html> tag, the country domain. More in Languages.
In detail
- Basics - words, exact phrases, combining, excluding, escaping.
- Operators -
depth:,site:,like:,ip:. - Similar websites -
like:: results in order of similarity instead of popularity. - Regular expressions -
snipexp:, with worked examples. - Country domains - every top-level domain PublicWWW indexes.
Where to go next
- Signatures - how to find the code a product leaves on its customers' websites.
- Technologies - ready-made queries by topic.
- API - the same searches from your own code.
- Clusters - keep and compare sets of results.