What does intitle mean?
Intitle is a search qualifier that focuses a query on the title of a web page or other document. It is commonly written as a term followed by a colon, such as intitle:poetry, and tells the search system to look for the specified word in titles rather than throughout the available text. This can make research more precise and reveal documents whose relevance is immediately apparent from their headings. The operator is particularly associated with search engines that support advanced field-specific syntax, although support is not universal and behavior can differ between services. In ordinary writing, intitle should generally be treated as a technical expression rather than as a conventional standalone word. Its practical value lies in narrowing broad searches and separating title matches from incidental mentions in page content.
search operatorA qualifier used in a search query to restrict matching terms to the title of a page or document. It is especially associated with search engines that support field-specific query syntax.
- A search-query qualifier that requires the specified term to occur in a page or document title.
"Searching for intitle:glossary produced several pages with “glossary” in their titles."
"The librarian suggested adding intitle:archive to the query to find relevant catalogues more quickly."
"That search engine does not recognize intitle: as a field restriction."
Type intitle before a word and your search stops looking everywhere else—at least, it tries to.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does intitle come from?
The expression combines the prefix in-, meaning “in” or “within,” with title, yielding the sense “within the title.” Title comes through Old French from the Latin titulus, meaning “a label, inscription, or heading.” The search sense developed through the practice of allowing users to restrict searches to particular fields of a document, including its title.
How intitle is actually used
This is technical query syntax rather than ordinary conversational English. Its exact spelling and support vary among search engines, so it is normally written without a space before the colon, as in intitle:history.
Easily confused with intitle
A title is the named heading of a page or document, whereas intitle is a search qualifier used to look for that heading.