Google is useful for more than just finding web pages. You can even locate files with the help of these tricks.
A search for filetype means you are narrowing down your results to only show files. Google can be used to locate files. You can find books, documents and sheet music as well as Microsoft Word files.
Files That You Can Find on Google
Google can find a lot of files and some of them are even indexed so you can search files with a particular term.
This is just a small list of files that you can find using a Google search. Other files might also be supported.
| Google supports common file types | |
|---|---|
| Format | File Extension |
| Adobe Portable Document Format | |
| Adobe PostScript | PS |
| Autodesk Design Web Format | DWF |
| Google Earth | KML, KMZ |
| GPS eXchange Format | GPX |
| Hancom Hanword | HWP |
| Hypertext Markup Language | HTM, HTML |
| Microsoft Excel | XLS, and XLSX |
| Microsoft PowerPoint | PPT, PPTX |
| Microsoft Word | DOCX, DOCX |
| Presentation OpenOffice | ODP |
| OpenOffice spreadsheet | ODS |
| OpenOffice text | ODT |
| Rich Text Format | RTF |
| Scalable vector graphics | SVG |
| TeX/LaTeX | TEX |
| Text | TXT, TEXT and BAS. C, CC. CPP. CXX. H, HPP. CS, JAVA. PL. PY. |
| Wireless Markup Language | WML, WAP |
| Extensible markup language | XML |
How To Search By File Type
To perform a Google file searching, the filetype command can be used. The file extension you associate with that operator immediately reduces the number of results so that only that type of file is shown.
If you are looking for books in this file format, you could search Google for PDFs.
filetype:pdf "jane eyre"
The search term you want Google to use within the files is what follows the file type.
The same principle applies to all file types. To locate samples of resumes in the DOCX format, for example:
Filetype:docx Resume
You can use Google Sheet Music Search to locate sheet music if you are a musician.
"moonlight sonata" "sheet music" filetype:pdf
Combining other commands
Google supports many advanced commands. You can combine any of these with a filetype search to dig deeper into the files that you are looking for.
Google Resumes
filetype:docx site:edu inurl:resume
This first example is for MS Word files. However, the site search excludes all top-level domains, except EDU sites. The inurl command allows us to only find Word files whose URL includes the word resume.
Search within PDFs and URLs
filetype:pdf site gov report inurl :2001
This search will only find PDFs with report within them. However, the URL must also include 2001. This search is designed to find files that have been classified in a 2001 folder on site’s server. Reports published in 2001 will be found.
Locate Map Files
filetype:kml Kansas
This KML file search shows custom maps files that are related to the Kansas keyword. You might find map annotations for bike trails, lakes, and car repair shops among the results. KML files can also be found that are specific to a map visualization such as meteors. (e.g. search for filetype:kml meteor).
filetype:swf Bloons
Are you having trouble finding an online game that is similar to the one you loved? If the Flash game is not available, a filetype search for SWF file might be helpful.
