Search for a Word on a Webpage

Nearly every web browser comes with a Find tool, which allows you to scan the page for matching words or phrases. You can also use Google's advanced search operators to perform a search for a word or phrase on all of the pages of a specific site. You can use this in conjunction with the Find tool to locate a word anywhere on the internet.

Steps

Searching on an Open Page

  1. Press .Ctrl+F (Windows) or Command+F (Mac). This will open the "Find" box in virtually any browser. This command can also be found in the Edit menu in Internet Explorer, or in the ☰ menu in Chrome and Firefox.
    • If you're using a mobile browser, the Find command is usually in the browser's menu. It may be called "Find in Page".
    • If you are using Safari for iOS, delete the address that is in the address bar and type the word you want to search for there instead. Select "On this page" from the search results that appear.[1]
  2. Type the word that you want to find on the page. Your browser will find matches as you type. Letter case is ignored when using the Find tool.
  3. Cycle through the matches. Click the Next and Previous buttons in the Find box to cycle though the search results. The page will jump to each one, and the results will be highlighted.[2]

Searching a Site with Google

  1. Visit Google in your browser. You can use Google to perform searches of all of the pages on a website. This can help you find matching words on large or complex websites.
  2. Enter .site: at the front of the search. This will tell Google to only search through pages on that site.
  3. Enter the word or phrase you want to search for after the site address. You can enter a single word, or you can enter phrases. To have Google look for an exact word or phrase, surround it with quotes.[3]
    • For example, to search wikiHow for any page that has the word "banana", you would type site:wikihow.com banana. To search wikiHow for any page that has the phrase "eat a banana", you would type site:wikihow.com "eat a banana".
  4. Open a page from the search results and use the Find command. Google will return any pages that match your search, but it won't point you to the matching text once you open the page. You'll need to use the Find tool to jump to where the word occurs on the page.
    • See the Search-for-a-Word-on-a-Webpage for information on using the Find tool.



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