How to Search for File Types on Google

When you Google a query, you’ll likely receive a list of web pages as a result. But did you know that you can use Google to find more than standard web pages?

Google can help you find books, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, Adobe files, and much more with the help of file type search.

Files Types Available on Google

Here is a complete list of file types that you can find on Google:

For updates, see the official list published by Google. 

How to Find File Types on Google 

Searching for one of these file types on Google is as easy as using the search bar. You just need to use the “filetype” search operator. To do so, add “filetype:” to the beginning of your search. For example:

This search operator will narrow down Google search results to only PDFs. 

However, you will likely need to search for a quote or topic, which can be done by adding your query in quotation marks after the file type operator. For example, “filetype:PDF Instagram” will limit your search results to only PDFs that mention or contain the phrase “Instagram” in their title or content. 

However, not all file content is indexable, so searching for a specific query won’t always return results. 

What are Search Operators?

You can use search operators to filter through your Google search results. Search operators are simple modifications to a standard Google search. 

For example, you may want to search for results in a specific site to add the site search operator to your query. Your search query would look like this:

Now, Google knows to only return results from the website www.yourdomain.com. Here’s our results from a site search on learningwithexperts.com: 

For a complete guide to search operators, read our step-by-step article on How to Run a Site Search on Google.

How to Index the Content in Different File Types

Where possible, Google will try to read (crawl) and index the content in different file types. However, sometimes Google will occasionally struggle to read and access various files. 

You can check if and how Google is crawling your website with third-party tools like the Log File Analyzer. 

If you’re concerned that your website isn’t crawled correctly, the Log File Analyzer can show you how often Google hits a page or file type on your site. It reads your website’s access logs and analyzes details of all activity that occurs from bots.

To use the tool, simply drag and drop or upload the access log files you’ve downloaded from your website. The tool returns a report on recent Googlebot activity, including any file types the bot interacted with:

You can also use Google Search Console to see how and if Google is indexing your web pages.

Key Takeaways

You can use Google to search for more than just queries. Try using search operators, like filetype to narrow down your search results.

For more information on all the different types of search operators and how they work, check out our complete guide to Google’s search operators.