Functionality


Functionality
Google search consists of a series of localized websites. The largest of those, the google.com site, is the top most-visited website in the world.Some of its features include a definition link for most searches including dictionary words, the number of results you got on your search, links to other searches (e.g. for words that Google believes to be misspelled, it provides a link to the search results using its proposed spelling), and many more.
Search syntax
Google's search engine normally accepts queries as a simple text, and breaks up the user's text into a sequence of search terms, which will usually be words that are to occur in the results, but one can also use Boolean operators, such as quotations marks (") for a phrase, a prefix such as "+", "-" for qualified terms (no longer valid, the '+' was removed from Google on October 19, 2011), or one of several advanced operators, such as "site:". The webpages of "Google Search Basics"describe each of these additional queries and options.Google's Advanced Search web form gives several additional fields which may be used to qualify searches by such criteria as date of first retrieval.
Query expansion
Google applies query expansion to the submitted search query, transforming it into the query that will actually be used to retrieve results. As with page ranking, the exact details of the algorithm Google uses are deliberately obscure, but certainly the following transformations are among those that occur:

  • Term reordering: in information retrieval this is a standard technique to reduce the work involved in retrieving results. This transformation is invisible to the user, since the results ordering uses the original query order to determine relevance.
  • Stemming is used to increase search quality by keeping small syntactic variants of search terms.
  • There is a limited facility to fix possible misspellings in queries.
"I'm Feeling Lucky"
"I'm Feeling Lucky" redirects here. For the 2011 book by Douglas Edwards, see I'm Feeling Lucky (book).

Google's homepage includes a button labeled "I'm Feeling Lucky". Prior to a change in 2012, when a user typed in a search and clicked on the button the user would be taken directly to the first search result, bypassing the search engine results page. The idea was that if a user is "feeling lucky", the search engine would return the perfect match the first time without having to page through the search results. According to a study by Tom Chavez of "Rapt", this feature cost Google $110 million a year as 1% of all searches use this feature and bypass all advertising.

With the introduction of Google Instant, the functionality of the button behaves differently.Currently, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button changes based on the user's settings and what webpage users are at. If Google Instant is turned off, the button will work as it previously did or, if the search box is empty, redirect to the Google Doodles gallery. If Google Instant is turned on and a user hovers over the button, the button text will spin and land on a phrase that starts with "I'm feeling" (e.g. "I'm feeling hungry" or "I'm feeling smart"). Each phrase links to a Google page related to the associated phrase.
Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox used "I'm Feeling Lucky" as the default search string when the user entered a query in the location bar; this functionality was deprecated in later versions.
Rich snippets
On May 12, 2009, Google announced that they would be parsing the hCard, hReview, and hProduct microformats and using them to populate search result pages with what they called "Rich Snippets".
Rich Card
On May 17, 2016, Google announce a new search result format builder called "Rich Card". Rich cards are similar like Rich snippet, use schema.org Structured markup to showcase the content in a new visual format. Rich card for four content categories: Recipes, Events, Product and Reviews.

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