From time to time, you may need to update specific terminology or language across your website—for example, if your office name changes, a policy is updated or if a staffing change occurs. A simple way to identify where a word or phrase appears is to use a Google search scoped to your website. Please note that this technique only applies to public-facing content that allows indexing by search engines.
Step 1: Use a Site-Specific Google Search
To search for a particular word or phrase across your site, use the following format in Google: “your phrase here” site:yourdomain.wisc.edu
For example, to find instances of the phrase John Doe on the RISE website, you would enter:
"John Doe" site:rise.wisc.edu
This will return a list of all publicly indexed pages on that subdomain containing that exact phrase.
Tips:
- Use quotation marks to search for exact matches.
- Be mindful of capitalization and punctuation—Google is usually flexible, but exact phrasing will narrow your results.
Alternative tools to explore
- SEO spiders (also known as web crawlers) are designed to “crawl over” your website and search for words or phrases. Screaming Frog is 1 example of an SEO spider.
- The WordPress CMS Search tool is another excellent way to search for keywords in posts. It may not work as well with pages, especially those built with a page building them or plugin that relies on custom fields.
Step 2: Review & edit content
Once you’ve identified the relevant pages, visit each one to review how the phrase is used. Make updates directly within your website’s content management system (CMS) as appropriate.
Step 3: Request reindexing (optional but recommended)
If your updates significantly affect how your content appears in search results (e.g., changing page titles, headings or key phrases), you may want to request reindexing through Google Search Console. This helps ensure your changes are reflected in Google search more quickly.