OSINT At Home #19 – Top 3 Google Search Hacks for Investigators

This tutorial is part 19 of the OSINT At Home series. The tutorial is a guided walkthrough on my three most-commonly used and favourite Google Search hacks, or what are commonly referred to as Google dorks or Google boolean search operators. In this tutorial I use many examples and case studies from Sudan in showing how to use the Google advanced search techniques to provide a practical element to the tutorial, please feel free to follow along.

These case studies were chosen for the purposes of teaching Google advanced search techniques and do not indicate or reveal investigations I am currently working on.

TIMESTAMPS
03:36 FILETYPE searches – to search for filetypes on Google
07:45 SITE searches – to search within specific websites, or filter results down to country level domains
13:10 INURL/INTITLE searches – for searching for text within a URL or in the title of a page or site

Being able to filter down Google Search results and essentially ‘hack’ Google’s search bar is so crucial for all researchers, but especially those working on investigations, as it is such a useful way to find new or hidden information and make new findings.

It should be noted that by using these advanced Google search techniques, some information discovered may be data that was not intentionally made public, and may reveal potentially sensitive information about an individual or organisation. If this type of information is discovered, good ethical procedures should be applied to ensure that you are not doing harm, or furthering harm by revealing this data or adding to the data’s exposure.

The OSINT At Home series is useful for those looking to find digital breadcrumbs and pick up some methods of open source intelligence (OSINT), digital investigations and good old plain research. No matter who you are, or where you are in the world, you can follow these tutorials from home with publicly available information to answer questions such as who, what, where and when.

TOOLS

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CREDITS FOR THIS TUTORIAL
Music Intro: World’s Fair – God Mode

[Bendobrown]

Hey all, I'm pretty keen to see if you've got any favorites you regularly use. Please drop them in the comments here!

[docmalitt]

sorry I bookmarked your entire playlist and just now came to look at the last (and finest... just kidding, they are all amazing) nuggets of knowledge. I am flabbergasted with only 20 comments - not a joke mate - instead of 2000. This crazy world we live in simply doesn't appreciate any sort of knowledge.. I guess they think (or wait) "uploads" from the movie Matrix will be available soon. Too much of Musk Kool-Aid ... ladie in a dark leather suit pretending to be a robot. Nobody wants to learn the "old way" anymore by reading oor watching (while practicing) - not in fashion anymore. I have bad news for them. Only way id your way... sit, watch, practice, repeat... thx for coming back after long time, always nice to see/hear you and learn new stuff. You are amazing (not hitting on you, but man your brain is ready for download :)))) - and keep it up

[stormtw]

brother your videos are so good i saw your play list for the osint and I love the way you teach if you can make more video like the sun calculator and geo osint that you make it's nice too keep going btw I like this video too also be more active

[WhattTheDeuce]

Loving this playlist

Hope you bring playlist on few more topics like: privacy, cybersecurity
❤

[mikenje]

Hi Benjamin,

Thank you for sharing your knowledge and enhancing my abilities. Would love to know if you are able to share any courses where OSINT skills can be advanced. Many Thanks

[nai]

Thankyou! What is unclear to me is: when does a regular Google search include document results as well (pdf/xls/etc)? Sometimes a search query turns up a certain document, and sometims only a search query with a 'site:pdf' operator turns up the document.

[loganbotwig]

thank you for the class bendobrown! when searching for webcams, how can one do more specific searches, like on a specific areas or cities instead of just looking for random ones?

[grilnam]

Ben, I appreciate most OSINT work could be done with almost any computer/monitor set up, but would you be able to say what you use or what you would have if you could have the ideal setup?

[nai]

The maps site-operator doesn't seem to be working anymore. Most queries render no results, and the one you used a year ago (Sudan) then rendered thousands of results and now only renders 9 results.

[ghazayel]

how to know on which webpage was a document linked?.
A PDF you found online, which webpage had a link to that file ?

[stefanjohansson]

3:54 That’s a fictitious and rough estimate of number of search results. Try to scrape them and don’t be surprised if it’s only 10 pages in total. 😂

[asham]

How can I contact you?
It’s about War in Sudan.

[CellTherapyCream]

Ahhh Google Dorks back when the engine was useful and viable. Now it's hot garbage driving mediocre dividends.

[pm]

Google search has gotten worse over the last five years unfortunately

[dasauto]

Is it possible to get EXIF data from instragram photos? Please. Urgent.