Large search engines, such as Google and Bing, have billions of web pages indexed in their servers, so they allow researchers to narrow and widen their search results using what are known as advanced search operators or Boolean operators.
Learning advanced search operators is a foundational skill for OSINT research for two reasons:
- Search engines have an enormous amount of information available, and it is important to learn the most efficient way to find the information you’re looking for.
- Other sites use advanced search operators as well. For example, X has an advanced search page (when logged in,) and it also accepts Boolean operators.
A Boolean operator is a type of logical operator used in search engines, databases, and programming to combine or exclude search terms. Named after the mathematician George Boole, these operators refine search results by defining relationships between different terms.
