Most people are pretty familiar with Google’s Advanced Search Operators. You can use them to more preciously search for web pages or particular data. Anyway, earlier today I discovered that Microsoft’s search engine, live.com, has an amusingly useful search operator that Google doesn’t have. It’s called linkfromdomain. Now, this isn’t new news. I did some Googling and the operator has been around since late 2006, however, since not very many people use live.com, I figured some of you might find this info useful.

The linkfromdomain operator allows you to search the websites that a particular website links to. For example, if you search for “linkfromdomain:patorjk.com“, you’d get a list of all of the sites I link to throughout this website. At first glance this may not seem that useful, however, it allows you to ask some interesting questions as an individual and as a webmaster. Here are some examples:

• Does patorjk.com link to any questionable websites? Example: “nsfw linkfromdomain:patorjk.com“
• Does patorjk.com have any reciprocal links? Example: “linkfromdomain:patorjk.com inbody:patorjk.com” [side note: this isn't perfect since I'm using the "inbody" operator instead of the "link" operator, however, live.com's "link" operator doesn't seem to work that well.]
• What youtube.com videos have been submitted to reddit, but not digg? Example: “(site:youtube.com linkfromdomain:reddit.com) AND -(site:youtube.com linkfromdomain:digg.com)“
• Which xkcd comics aren’t listed on reddit? Example: “(site:xkcd.com) AND -(site:xkcd.com linkfromdomain:reddit.com)” [side note: This isn't perfect, as live.com doesn't index all of reddit, it's pretty close though.]

I don’t think Google currently has the ability to answer any of those questions, which is a little surprising. Anyway, there are probably lots of other neat questions you can form using the linkfromdomain operator. It’s definitely something to keep in mind when you’re surfing the web.