Information Gatheringmetadataextractiondocumentsgooglepdfdocxls

Metagoofil

Metagoofil is an information gathering tool for extracting metadata from public documents belonging to a target company. It searches Google to identify and download files like PDF, DOC, XLS, and PPT.

Description

Metagoofil is designed for extracting metadata of public documents (pdf, doc, xls, ppt, docx, pptx, xlsx) from a target company. It performs searches on Google to find and download these documents to the local disk, aiding in reconnaissance and information gathering during security assessments.

Use cases include passive reconnaissance where metadata such as author names, software versions, usernames, and paths can reveal sensitive internal information without direct interaction with the target. The tool limits searches and downloads to avoid detection and respects delays to prevent IP blocking by Google.

Note that current versions no longer extract metadata directly; users should refer to /usr/share/doc/metagoofil/README.md.gz for extraction methods.

How It Works

Metagoofil queries Google for specific file types from a given domain, using parameters like search limits and delays between requests to avoid rate limiting. It downloads a specified number of matching files to a local directory and can save HTML links to a file. Metadata extraction is no longer handled by the tool itself.

Installation

bash
sudo apt install metagoofil

Flags

-d DOMAINDomain to search.
-t FILE_TYPESFile types to search for (e.g., pdf).
-l SEARCH_MAXMaximum number of search results.
-n DOWNLOAD_FILE_LIMITLimit on number of files to download.
-o SAVE_DIRECTORYDirectory to save downloaded files.
-f [SAVE_FILE]Save the html links to a file. No -f = Do not save links; -f = Save to html_links_<TIMESTAMP>.txt.
-e DELAYDelay (in seconds) between searches. Default: 30.0.
-i URL_TIMEOUTURL timeout.
-r NUMBER_OF_THREADSNumber of threads.
-u [USER_AGENT]User agent.
-wUnknown from help output.

Examples

Scan for PDF files from kali.org, searching 100 results, downloading 25 files to kalipdf directory, saving output to kalipdf.html.
metagoofil -d kali.org -t pdf -l 100 -n 25 -o kalipdf -f kalipdf.html
Search for PDF and DOC files from example.com up to 200 results, download 50 to docs directory.
metagoofil -d example.com -t pdf,doc -l 200 -n 50 -o docs
Find XLS files from target.org, limit to 50 search results, download 10, save links to links.html.
metagoofil -d target.org -t xls -l 50 -n 10 -f links.html
Search PPT files from company.com, 100 results, save downloads to presentations directory.
metagoofil -d company.com -t ppt -l 100 -o presentations
Search PDFs from site.net with 60-second delay between searches to avoid blocking.
metagoofil -d site.net -t pdf -l 100 -n 20 -e 60
Show help message and usage options.
metagoofil -h
Updated 2026-04-16kali.org ↗