Danny Sullivan, Google's Search Liaison, confirmed that the search company is not closing the site command search operator. He said this after there were some complaints about the operator not working properly.
Sullivan said on X, "we aren't closing site: search."
A site command restricts the search results to a specific site. For example, in a world where Google did not show Reddit results for every query, and in a world where you want to see results from Reddit, you can do a site:reddit.com querygoeshere in Google Search to find search result matches that are on Reddit.com.
Here is a site command format:
What is weird, is that Google is not showing Google.com, the Google home page - but Google says order is not symbolic of any specific site issue and order means nothing for site commands.
In 2017, Google said twice they have no plans to remove the site command, adding that some Googlers would fight to keep it, despite its flaws.
Danny Sullivan did confirm that the site command had a bug about a week ago, and maybe it is still having lingering bugs:
I can't replicate that, but I know we did have a bug similar about a week ago, I think. Which was definitely a bug -- we aren't closing site: search. I'll pass this on so folks can check.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) April 10, 2024
Forum discussion at X.
