How to narrow Google Image Search to only include specific file type

Question

I want to narrow a Google Image Search to only include a specific file type.

In my specific case, I'm interested only in .gifs.

• Including the search term ".gif" does not effectively or consistently limit (or include) all .gifs in my search

• .gif is not a supported file type for Google search indexing

Is there a way to effectively do this?

Answer 1

It looks like including filetype:gif in the search adds a new "search tool" option to limit the results by filetype. (The menu also includes JPG, SVG, ICO, PNG, and several others.)

(The "Google search indexing" support page you link to only lets you know what files the Googlebot can look in to index the text. Images are parsed with machine-learning.)

In any event, using filetype:gif seems to only return GIF files.

Alternatively, you can also use inurl:.gif, which will look at the actual URL to see if the string is contained. It works pretty well, but will likely be subject to false positives. (Something like http://www.example.com/images/catdog.gif.txt.)

Answer 2

Use the Tools or add typefile:gif at the end of your search.