How to Find PDF Files Online

Kevin Leary

August 29, 2012

If 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!

Principal Front-end Engineer

Kevin is the Principal Front-end Engineer at <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/">MIT Technology Review</a>. He specializes in building and designing websites and products. He also writes articles at Smashing Magazine and CSS Tricks. Before MIT Technology Review, Kevin was the Manager of Web Operations at RapidMiner.