How to search for & update specific words or phrases on your website
Last updated:
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.
NOTE: This technique only applies to public-facing content that allows indexing by search engines.
Use a site-specific Google search
To search for a particular word or phrase across your site, use the following format in Google search: “your phrase here” site:yourdomain.wisc.edu
For example, to find instances of the phrase John Doe on the it.wisc.edu website, you would enter: “John Doe” site:it.wisc.edu
This will return a list of all publicly indexed pages on that subdomain containing that exact phrase.
Pro 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.
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.
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 (re)indexing through Google Search Console.
Reindexing helps ensure your changes are reflected in Google search more quickly.
Alternative tools
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) spiders
SEO spiders, or web crawlers, crawl your website to search for specific words or phrases. Screaming Frog is one example of an SEO spider.
For more details, explore Screaming Frog.
WordPress Posts Screen search
Use the Posts Screen search to find keywords in your posts. This tool often fails to find content on pages built with custom fields or page-building plugins.
For more details, explore the WordPress Posts Screen documentation.