How to Find PDF Files Online

August 29, 2012 by

Adobe Reader 10.1.2If you’re wondering how to find PDF files online consider using the Google filetype search operator. Depending on what I’m looking for, I often find that PDF’s can be a better source for information than traditional websites. Many of them are created by academia, or other reputable organizations, and the quality and quantity of information seems to be much higher quality.

Using the Filetype Operator

If you want to find PDF files on Google try using the filetype advanced search operator like this:

"Your Search Here" filetype:pdf

This tells Google to search for PDF files only, and quite often the results are very valuable. For example, let’s say we wanted to search for Ebooks on Google, we could run the following search:

"Ebook" filetype:pdf

Hopefully this helps you find quality PDF files on Google!

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Discussion

  • abelniak

    Great tip, and one I use often. A couple of friendly amendments… use the OR operator as well (needs to be uppercase) and search for ebook OR e-book (this can be applied with lots of other terms). Another is to search http://www.SlideShare.net for ebooks and related content, since that’s a great repository for this kind of content.

    • http://www.kevinleary.net/ Kevin Leary

      Glad I could help Abe!