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Above: Apple’s New iPad Pro’s

Introduction

One day last week my husband told me he’d searched a website for something. To say I was surprised would be an understatement! Because, I’m the tech person now in our empty-nested 2 person household. Yet I didn’t know that it was possible to search an entire website for one little thing. My own website for example has hundreds of posts and pages,,,.certainly no one could search through all that quickly and easily.  That’s why I continue to house my somewhat unsightly but infinitely useful side menu system (which is in addition to the top menu…and also essentially identical to it!) Yet seeing how ungainly it’s become makes me cringe!

My husband and I argued for a while when I finally learned that he hadn’t really done that. I’m almost to embarrassed to tell you that was a big relief  for me because it means I continue to know more than he does about tech stuff. But the thought stayed with me.

Today I had occasion to need this exact capability so I decided to find out once and for all if this is really possible. And if it is possible, is it possible using an iPad?

That 2nd question is important because as many of my regular readers know, I use an iPad for pretty much everything I do online…which is a lot! Because of that I know for a fact that an iPad can never replace a computer…at least not easily, that is. Despite Apple’s increasing claims to the contrary.

What is easily done however using an ios device, is to search a webpage for a specific word or phrase.

I learned today that it’s equally easy to search a whole website for that word or phrase! Even more impressive is that this isn’t limited to just ios devices…

Anyone Can Do It!!!

Here’s How to Search a Whole Website for a Word or a Phrase

Simply pull up a Google search bar and enter this into the search bar:

site:

the site name

the search word or phrase 

It occurred to me that what this is doing is essentially Googling within a website…which is pretty cool I think!

Putting it All Together

site:the site name the search word or phrase

A Real World Example

Today I wanted to search my 93 year old Dad’s website for his story recounting the worst inflation his family had ever experienced. This occurred before he was born in post World War I Germany.

As you can see from the screenshot a little further down, the way that Dad’s site is organized is that he uses menus for main categories of information. That means that when I’m searching for something in his website I need to open each category’s menu and scan through it. This can be time consuming and oftentimes I scan right past what I’m looking for.

You may also notice that Dad doesn’t have a search bar in his website. That’s something I’ve suggested to him…but let’s face it…at 93 years old he sometimes struggles just to keep creating new content and getting it posted to the right place!  So, maybe when I’m visiting during Thanksgiving I’ll try to figure out how to do that for him.

But I digress…lets get on with my search.

While on his homepage I just scroll to the top of the page where my Google search bar is located. Currently it has his homepage information preloaded in the search bar which makes it super easy for me to add the remaining bits of information to.

As you can see by the following Google search results I hit the jackpot.

I’m pretty shocked to see how many search results are all from Dad’s site! Apparently he’s written quite a lot on the subject of inflation!  It’s the first search result that’s the one I need…a story called ‘Inflation at it’s Worst.’ 

When I click on it, it takes me to Dad’s fascinating article (shown below) on what may well be the worst inflation that’s ever occurred in modern times!

So it Works!!

I guess I need to give my husband partial credit for even knowing that this was possible to do ;-)

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