Special features


Special features
Besides the main search-engine feature of searching for text, Google Search has more than 22 "special features" (activated by entering any of dozens of trigger words) when searching:

weather – The weather conditions, temperature, wind, humidity, and forecast, for many cities can be viewed by typing "weather" along with a city for larger cities or city and state, U.S. zip code, or city and country for smaller cities (such as: weather Lawrence, Kansas; weather Paris; weather Bremen, Germany).

stock quotes – The market data[10] for a specific company or fund can be viewed by typing the ticker symbol (or include "stock"), such as: CSCO; MSFT; IBM stock; F stock (lists Ford Motor Co.); or AIVSX (fund). Results show inter-day changes, or 5-year graph, etc. This does not work for many stock names which are one letter long, such as Macy's (M), or are common words, such as Diamond Offshore (DO) or Majesco (COOL).

time – The current time in many cities (worldwide) can be viewed by typing "time" and the name of the city (such as: time Cairo; time Pratt, KS).

timer – set a countdown

sports scores – The scores and schedules, for sports teams, can be displayed by typing the team name or league name into the search box.

unit conversion – Measurements can be converted by entering each phrase, such as 10.5 cm in inches, or 90 km in miles

currency conversion – A money or currency converter can be selected[10] by typing the names or currency codes (listed by ISO 4217): 6789 Euro in USD; 150 GBP in USD; 5000 Yen in USD; 5000 Yuan in lira (the U.S. dollar can be USD or "US$" or "$", while Canadian is CAD, etc.).

calculator – calculation results can be determined, as it is calculated live, by entering a formula in numbers or words, such as: 6*77 +pi +sqrt(e^3)/888 plus 0.45. Search results for the formula are displayed after the calculation result. The caret "^" raises a number to an exponent power, and percentages are allowed ("40% of 300").[11] Following the convention used in discrete mathematics, Google's calculator evaluates 0^0 to 1. The calculator also uses the unit and currency conversion functions to allow unit-aware calculations. For example, "(3 EUR/liter) / (40 miles/gallon) in USD / mile" calculates the dollar cost per mile for a 40 mpg car with gas costing 3 euros a liter. The calculator also can calculate digital storage arithmetic (the calculation of bytes). For example, putting in 400 MB + 489 MB + 1.5GB yields the result 2425 MB, or 2.37GB. This is useful since bytes are binary (power of 2), and not decimal as regular numbers are (power of 10). Caveat: it doesn't offer arbitrary precision and is subject to floating point errors in queries like 4,000,000,000,000,000 – 3,999,999,999,999,999.

numeric ranges – A set of numbers can be matched by using a double-dot between range numbers (70..73 or 90..100) to match any positive number in the range, inclusive. Negative numbers are treated as using exclusion-dash to not match the number.

dictionary lookup – A definition for a word or phrase can be found,by entering "define" followed by a colon and the word(s) to look up (such as, "define:philosophy")

maps – Some related maps can be displayed, by typing in the name or U.S. ZIP code of a location and the word "map" (such as: New York map; Kansas map; or Paris map).

movie showtimes – Reviews or film showtimes can be listed for any movies playing nearby, by typing "movies" or the name of any current film into the search box. If a specific location was saved on a previous search, the top search result will display showtimes for nearby theaters for that movie.
public data – Trends for population (or unemployment rates) can be found for U.S. states and counties, by typing "population" or "unemployment rate" followed by a state or county name.

real estate and housing – Home listings in a given area can be displayed, using the trigger words "housing", "home", or "real estate" followed by the name of a city or U.S. zip code.

travel data/airports – The flight status for arriving or departing U.S. flights can be displayed, by typing in the name of the airline and the flight number into the search box (such as: American airlines 18). Delays at a specific airport can also be viewed (by typing the name of the city or three-letter airport code plus word "airport").

package tracking – Package mail can be tracked by typing the tracking number of a Royal Mail, UPS, FedEx or USPS package directly into the search box. Results will include quick links to track the status of each shipment.

patent numbers – U.S. patents can be searched by entering the word "patent" followed by the patent number into the search box (such as: Patent 5123123).

area code – The geographical location (for any U.S. telephone area code) can be displayed by typing a three-digit area code (such as: 650).

Six degrees of Kevin Bacon – A search to find the shortest path between an arbitrary actor and veteran Hollywood character actor Kevin Bacon. Simply search using 'bacon number actorname'.

Google Goggles – using the Google Goggles app on your smartphone you can take a photograph of anything and get quick results for your search. If you wish to pursue more detailed search results you can click the "full results" tab and get a full blown Google search of the object you photographed.

Knowledge graph – A search for things, people or places that Google knows about, such as landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, movies, celestial objects, works of art and more, and information that applies to the search term is shown in the upper right. It is rooted in public information such as Wikipedia, United States Census Bureau and the CIA World Factbook.

Metronome – Provides a metronome with an adjustable bpm.

Search options
The webpages maintained by the Google Help Center have text describing more than 15 various search options.The Google operator

  • OR – Search for either one, such as "price high OR low" searches for "price high" or "price low".
  • - (minus sign) – Exclude a word or a phrase, such as "apple -tree" searches where word "tree" is not used.
  • "" – Force inclusion of a word or a phrase (Note that the original + operator was removed on October 19, 2011).
  • * – Wildcard operator to match any words between other specific words, e.g. "type * blood".
  • .. – Range operator, e.g. "$50..$100".
Some of the query options are as follows:
  • define: – The query prefix "define:" will provide a definition[50] of the words listed after it.
  • stocks: – After "stocks:" the query terms are treated as stock ticker symbols for lookup.
  • site: – Restrict the results to those websites in the given domain,such as, site:www.acmeacme.com. The option "site:com" will search all domain URLs named with ".com" (no space after "site:").
  • intext: – Prefix to search in a webpage text, such as "intext:google search" will list pages with word "google" in the text of the page, and word "search" anywhere (no space after "intext:").
  • allintitle: – Only the page titles are searched (not the remaining text on each webpage).
  • intitle: – Prefix to search in a webpage title, such as "intitle:google search" will list pages with word "google" in title, and word "search" anywhere (no space after "intitle:").
  • allinurl: – Only the page URL address lines are searched(not the text inside each webpage).
  • inurl: – Prefix for each word to be found in the URL; others words are matched anywhere, such as "inurl:acme search" matches "acme" in a URL, but matches "search" anywhere (no space after "inurl:").
The page-display options (or query types) are:
  • cache: – Highlights the search-words within the cached document, such as "cache:www.google.com xxx" shows cached content with word "xxx" highlighted.
  • link: – The prefix "link:" will list webpages that have links to the specified webpage, such as "link:www.google.com" lists webpages linking to the Google homepage.
  • related: – The prefix "related:" will list webpages that are "similar" to a specified web page.
  • info: – The prefix "info:" will display some background information about one specified webpage, such as, info:www.google.com. Typically, the info is the first text (160 bytes, about 23 words) contained in the page, displayed in the style of a results entry (for just the 1 page as matching the search).
  • filetype: – results will only show files of the desired type (e.g. filetype:pdf will return pdf files)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Error messages

Error messages Some searches will give a 403 Forbidden error with the text We're sorry...  … but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now.  We'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.  We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we'll see you again on Google. sometimes followed by a CAPTCHA prompt. The screen was first reported in 2005, and was a response to the heavy use of Google by search engine optimization companies to check on ranks of sites they were optimizing. Google says the message is triggered only by high volumes of requests from a single IP address, however the use of the ...
Keep reading

Instant search

Instant search Google Instant, a feature that displays suggested results while the user types, was introduced in the US on September 8, 2010. In concert with the Google Instant launch, Google disabled the ability of users to choose to see more than 10 search results per page. At the time of the announcement, Google expected Instant to save users 2 to 5 seconds in every search, collectively about 11 million seconds per hour. Search engine marketing experts speculated that Google Instant would have a great impact on local and paid search.Google Search is a turn from a static HTML page into an AJAX application. Instant Search can be disabled via Google's "preferences" menu, but autocomplete-style search suggestions cannot be disabled, by intention. The publication 2600: The Hacker Quarterly compiled a list of words that Google Instant did not show.Most banned terms are those considered rude, but some apparently irrelevant searches including "Myleak" are...
Keep reading