How To Search For Directory Listings 2

Following from How To Search For Directory Listings 1 on how to accurately locate directory listings, now it is time to apply some of the advanced operators to filter out the unwanted results. Here are 4 ways to narrow your result of directory listings.

Narrow Results by Site
Use the site operator to narrow results to a particular site's directory listing.

Example: intitle:index.of "parent.directory" site:wikipedia.org

Narrow Results by Sub-Directory
Use the inurl operator with the name of the sub-directory to narrow results to that sub-directory. The following example returns only directory listings that contains sub-directories with the name "admin".

Example: intitle:index.of "parent.directory" inurl:admin

Narrow Results by File Type
Use the filetype or ext operator.

Note that when combined with directory listing search, Google blocks the results from displaying the more popular audio and video file formats such as mp3, mp4, wma, wmv, ogg, avi, etc. The only popular video file format I have found that still works in such searches is the Flash Video format (flv). To overcome this, submit the filetype as an ordinary search term. This, however, does not guarantee that the results will contain your desired file type.

No result example: intitle:index.of "parent.directory" ext:mp3

Narrow Results by Specific File

This is easy if you have throughly understood the basic and advanced operators. Just include the file name and extension you wish to locate. Use double quotes to restrict your search further. Use the OR and period operators to expand your search.

Example: intitle:index.of "parent.directory" "this.is.an.example.mp3"

How To Search For Directory Listings 1

Directory listing has several features that you can make use of to locate actual listings in Google's search results.


The most obvious is the Index of phrase that appears in the title of all directory listings. However, you will realize that simply submitting intitle:index.of will simply not work that well - Google returns far too many false results. To prevent this, we can make use of other key phrases that appears on directory listings, such as Parent Directory and Last modified.

Examples:
intitle:index.of "parent.directory" password OR passwd OR pw
intitle:index.of "parent.directory" image OR img
intitle:index.of "parent.directory" +mp3

Name, Size, and Description do not serve as good search terms because they are too common even when combined with the inanchor operator. You can add more search terms with other operators to narrow your search results. inurl and filetype are good operators for combinations in this case.

Another method to filter out false results is to make use of the server version located at the bottom of directory listings. Try to include the phrase server.at in your search query.


Note that some directory listings do not include server information, so use the server.at phrase a last resort if Google returns millions of hits even after refining your searches.

inanchor, allinanchor Google Operator

The inanchor operator

The inanchor operator searches the anchor of a link, and not the actual URL. What is an anchor of a link?

An example of a link: Google Expert Tips. The anchor of this example is the displayed text 'Google Expert Tips'. Underlying the more readable and meaningful anchor text is the actual URL of the page. The HTML code looks like:

The inanchor operator searches within the anchor text "Google Expert Tips" in this case. This operator can be used with other operators.

Example: inanchor:scholarship inanchor:form inanchor:application site:edu

See the link operator for more details.

The allinanchor operator

The allinanchor operator searches for all search terms submitted. The following example will show the same results as the above.

Example: allinanchor:scholarship form application site:edu

This operator should not be combined with other operators. Use multiple inanchor operators if you are combining with other operators.