How to Use Google to Find Files Online

This article explains how to use filetype in a Google search so that the results include only files. When Google is used to find files, you can locate books, documents, sheet music, Microsoft Word files, and more.

How to Search By File Type

The filetype command is used to perform a Google file search. When you use that operator in your searches, the file extension that you tie with it immediately narrows down all results to show only that file type.

For example, you might search for PDFs on Google if you're looking for books in that file format:

filetype:pdf "jane eyre"

What follows the file type is the search term that you want Google to look for within the files.

This same pattern works for any of the file types. For example, to locate resumes samples in the DOCX file format:

filetype:docx resume

If you're a musician and you want to use Google to find sheet music, your best bet is to use the PDF file-type search:

"moonlight sonata" "sheet music" filetype:pdf

Combining Other Commands

Google supports lots of advanced commands, any of which you can combine with a filetype search to dig even deeper into the files you're looking for.

Find Resumes on Google

filetype:docx site:edu inurl:resume

In this first example, we're looking for MS Word files, but the site search eliminates all top-level domains except EDU sites, and the inurl command lets us find only the Word files where the URL contains the word resume.

Search Within PDFs and URLs

filetype:pdf site:gov report inurl:2001

For this search, we're finding PDFs that have the word report in them, but only if the URL also includes 2001. The idea here is to locate files that have been categorized in a 2001 folder on the site's server, which will likely find reports published in that year.

Find Map Files

filetype:kml kansas

A KML file search like this one shows custom map files related to the Kansas search term. Some results might include map annotations for bicycle trails, lakes, car repair shops, etc. You could also find KML files that cover a specific map visualization, such as meteors (e.g., search for filetype:kml meteor).

filetype:swf bloons

Can't find an online game that you used to love to play? A filetype search for SWF files might help, so long as the game is available as a Flash file.

Files You Can Find on Google

Google can locate a large handful of files, and some are even indexed, meaning that you can search for files that have a specific term in them.

This is a list of just some of the files you can find with a Google search (others might be supported, too):