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Webcomic by J. D. Frazer

This article is about the webcomic titled User Friendly. For the term used generically, see Usability. For other uses, see User Friendly (disambiguation).

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User Friendly
An example of a User Friendly comic strip
Author(s)	J. D. Frazer, a.k.a. "Illiad"
Website	www.userfriendly.org
Current status/schedule	Completed
Launch date	November 17, 1997 (1997-11-17)[# 1]
End date	November 21, 2010 (2010-11-21)
Genre(s)	Technology and geek humor

User Friendly was a webcomic written by J. D. Frazer, also known by his pen name Illiad. Starting in 1997, the strip was one of the earliest webcomics to make its creator a living. The comic is set in a fictional internet service provider and draws humor from dealing with clueless users and geeky subjects. The comic ran seven days a week until 2009, when updates became sporadic, and since 2010 it had been in re-runs only. The webcomic was shut down in late February 2022, after an announcement from Frazer.^[1]

Premise

[edit]

User Friendly is set inside a fictional ISP, Columbia Internet.^[2] According to reviewer Eric Burns, the strip is set in a world where "[u]sers were dumbasses who asked about cupholders that slid out of their computers, marketing executives were perverse and stupid and deserved humiliation, bosses were clueless and often naively cruel, and I.T. workers were somewhat shortsighted and misguided, but the last bastion of human reason... Every time we see Greg working, it's to deal with yet another annoying, self-important clueless user who hasn't gotten his brain around the digital world".^[3] Although mostly gag-a-day, the comic often had ongoing running arcs and occasionally continuing character through-lines.

Cast

[edit]

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A.J., Illiad's alter ego,^[4] represents "the creative guy" in the strip, maintaining and designing websites. As a web designer, he's uncomfortably crammed in that tiny crevice between the techies and the marketing people. This means he's not disliked by anyone, but they all look at him funny from time to time. A.J. is shy and sensitive, loves most computer games and nifty art, and has a big-brother relationship with the Dust Puppy. A.J. is terrified of grues and attempts to avoid them.^{[# 2]} He was released from the company on two separate occasions but returned shortly thereafter.

In the strip as of September 16, 2005, he and Miranda (another character) are dating. They also have previously dated, but split up over a misunderstanding.

The Chief is Columbia Internet's CEO. He is the leader of the techies and salespeople.

Illiad based the character on a former boss, saying, "The Chief is based on my business mentor. He was the vice president that I reported to back in the day. The Chief, like my mentor, is tall (!) and thin and sports a bushy ring around a bald crown, plus a very thick moustache." The Chief bears a superficial resemblance to the Pointy-Haired Boss of Dilbert fame. However, Illiad says that The Chief was not inspired by the Dilbert character.^{[# 3]} His personality is very different from the PHB, as well: he manages in the laissez-faire style, as opposed to the Marketing-based, micro-managing stance of the PHB. He has encouraged the office to standardise on Linux (much to Stef's chagrin).^{[# 4]}

Born in a server from a combination of dust, lint, and quantum events, the Dust Puppy looks similar to a ball of dust and lint, with eyes, feet and an occasional big toothy smile. He was briefly absent from the strip after accidentally being blown with compressed air while sleeping inside a dusty server.

Although the Dust Puppy is very innocent and unworldly, he plays a superb game of Quake. He also created an artificial intelligence named Erwin, with whom he has been known to do occasional song performances (or filks).

Dust Puppy is liked by most of the other characters, with the exceptions of Stef and the Dust Puppy's evil nemesis, the Crud Puppy.

First appearance December 3, 1997.^{[# 5]}

Crud Puppy (Lord Ignatius Crud)^{[# 6]} is the evil twin, born from the crud in Stef's keyboard; he is the nemesis of the Dust Puppy and sometimes takes the role of "bad guy" in the series. Examples include being the attorney/legal advisor of both Microsoft and then AOL or controlling a "Thing" suit in the Antarctic. He is most often seen in later strips in an Armani suit, usually sitting at the local bar with Cthulhu. The Crud Puppy first appeared in the strip on February 24, 1998.^{[# 7]}

Erwin first appeared in the January 25, 1998 strip. Erwin is a highly advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) created overnight during experimentation in artificial intelligence by the Dust Puppy, who was feeling kind of bored. Erwin is written in COBOL^{[# 8]} because Dust Puppy "lost a bet".^{[# 9]} Erwin passes the Turing test with flying colours, and has a dry sense of humour. He is an expert on any subject that is covered on the World Wide Web, such as Elvis sightings and alien conspiracies. Erwin is rather self-centered, and he is fond of mischievous pranks.

Originally, Erwin occupied the classic "monitor and keyboard" type computer with an x86 computer architecture, but was later given such residences as an iMac, a Palm III, a Coleco Adam on Mir, a Furby, a nuclear weapon guidance system, an SGI O2, a Hewlett-Packard Calculator (with reverse Polish notation, which meant that Erwin talked like Yoda for weeks afterward), a Lego Mindstorms construction, a Tamagotchi, a Segway, an IBM PC 5150, a Timber Wolf-class BattleMech,^{[# 10]} and an Internet-equipped toilet (with Dust Puppy being the toilet brush), as a punishment for insulting Hastur.

Greg is in charge of Technical Support in the strip. In other words, he's the guy that customers whine to when something goes wrong, which drives him nuts. He blows off steam by playing visceral games and doing bad things to the salespeople. He's not a bad sort, but his grip on his sanity hovers somewhere between weak and non-existent, and he once worked for Microsoft Quality Assurance.

Mike is the System Administrator of the strip and is responsible for the smooth running of the network at the office. He's bright but prone to fits of anxiety. His worst nightmare is being locked in a room with a sweaty Windows 95 programmer and no hacking weapons in sight.^[5] He loves hot ramen straight out of a styrofoam cup.

Miranda is a trained systems technologist, an experienced UNIX sysadmin, and very, very female. Her technical abilities unnerve the other techs, but her obvious physical charms compel them to stare at her, except for Pitr, who is convinced she is evil. Although she has few character flaws, she does express sadistic tendencies, especially towards marketers and lusers. Miranda finds Dust Puppy adorable.

She and A.J. are dating as of September 16, 2005, although she was previously frustrated by his inability to express himself and his love for her. This comes after years of missed opportunities and misunderstandings, such as when A.J. poured his feelings into an email and Miranda mistook it for the ILOVEYOU email worm and deleted it unread.^[6]

Pitr is the administrator of the Columbia Internet server and a self-proclaimed Linux guru. He suddenly began to speak with a fake Slavic accent as part of his program to "Become an Evil Genius." He has almost succeeded in taking over the planet several times. His sworn enemy is Sid, who seems to outdo him at every turn. Pitr's achievements include: making the world's (second) strongest coffee, merging Coca-Cola, Pepsi into Pitr-Cola and making Columbia Internet millions with a nuclear weapon purchased from Russia, and the infamous Vigor text editor. He briefly worked for Google, nearly succeeding in world domination, but was released from there and returned to Columbia Internet. Despite his vast efforts to become the ultimate evil character, his lack of illheartedness prevents him from reaching such achievement.

Sid is the oldest of the geeks and very knowledgeable. His advanced age gives him the upper hand against Pitr, whom he has outdone on several occasions, including in a coffee-brewing competition and in a round of Jeopardy! that he hacked in his own favor. Unlike Pitr, he has no ambitions for world domination per se, but he is a friend of Hastur and Cthulhu (based on the H. P. Lovecraft Mythos characters). He was hired in September 2000 and he had formerly worked for Hewlett-Packard, with ten years' experience^{[# 11]} It is his habit, unlike the other techs, to dress to a somewhat professional degree; when he first came to work, Smiling Man, the head accountant, expressed shock at the fact that Sid was wearing his usual blue business suit.^{[# 12]} He is also a fan of old technology, having grown up in the age of TECO, PDP-6es, the original VT100, FORTRAN, IBM 3270 and the IBM 5150; one could, except for the decent taste in clothing, categorise him as a Real Programmer. He was once a cannabis smoker,^{[# 13]} as contrasted with the rest of the technological staff, who prefer caffeine (Greg in the form of cola, Miranda in the form of espresso). This had the unfortunate effect of causing lung cancer and he was treated by an oncologist.^{[# 14]} He has since recovered from the cancer and was told he has another 20 years or so to live.

Sid Dabster's beautiful daughter. The character appeared for the first time in the strip of Aug. 30, 2001.^{[# 15]} Pearl is often seen getting the better of the boys. She is the antagonist of Miranda, and occasionally the object of Pitr's affections, much to the chagrin of Sid. Some people (both in strip and in the real world) wrongly assume that the character was named after the scripting language PERL. While this may be the true intention of the author, in the script timeline, is shown to be an error based on wordplay.^{[# 16]}

The Smiling Man is the company comptroller. He is in charge of accounts, finances, and expenditures. He smiles all day for no reason. This in itself is enough to terrify most normal human beings (even via phone). However, the Dust Puppy, the "Evilphish", a delirious Stef, and a consultant in a purple suit have managed to get him to stop smiling first. His favourite wallpaper is a large, complex, and utterly meaningless spreadsheet.

Stef is the strip's Corporate Sales Manager. He runs most of the marketing efforts within the firm, often selling things before they exist. He is a stereotypical marketer, with an enormous ego and a condescending attitude toward the techies; they detest him and frequently retaliate with pranks. He sucks at Quake, even once managing to die at the startup screen in Quake III Arena;^{[# 17]} in addition, he manages to die by falling into lava in any game that contains it, including games where it is normally impossible to step in said lava.^{[# 18]} Although he admires Microsoft and frequently defends their marketing tactics, infuriating the techies, he has a real problem with Microsoft salesmen, probably because they make much more money than he does. His attitude towards women is decidedly chauvinist; he lusts after Miranda who will not have anything to do with him. Stef is definitely gormless, as demonstrated on January 14, 2005.^{[# 19]}

In a 2008 article, reviewer Eric Burns said that as best he could tell, Frazer had produced strips seven days a week, without missing an update for, at that time, almost 11 years.^[3] Frazer would draw several days' worth of comics in advance, but the Sunday comic – based on current events and in color – was always drawn for immediate release and did not relate to the regular storyline.^{[citation needed]}

The website for User Friendly included other features such as Link of the Day and Iambe Intimate & Interactive, a weekly editorial written under the pseudonym "Iambe".^[7]

In late 1999, User Friendly and Sluggy Freelance swapped a character (A.J. and Torg).^{[citation needed]}

The strip and Loki Software teamed up for player skin and custom level contest for Quake III Arena in 2000.^[8] A Flash cartoon based on the series was also produced.^[9][10]

J. D. Frazer was born in 1969.^[11] He began his career in law enforcement and served as a corrections officer,^[12] hoping eventually to join the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but he changed his mind, leaving law enforcement to pursue more creative endeavours.^[13] He worked as a game designer, production manager, art director, project manager, Web services manager, writer, creative director, and cartoonist.^[14] As of 2014^[update] he lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.^[5]

Frazer started writing User Friendly in 1997.^[2] According to Frazer, he started cartooning at age 12. He had tried to get into cartooning through syndicates with a strip called Dust Puppies, but it was rejected by six syndicates. Later, while working at an ISP, he drew some cartoons which his co-workers enjoyed. He then drew a month's worth of cartoons and posted them online. After that, he quit his job and then worked on the comic.^[15]

Writer Xavier Xerxes said that in the very early days of webcomics, Frazer was probably one of the bigger success stories and was one of the first to make a living from a webcomic.^[16] Eric Burns attributed initial success of the comic to the makeup of the early internet, saying, "In 1997, a disproportionate number of internet users... were in the I.T. Industry. When User Friendly began gathering momentum, there wasn't just little to nothing like it on the web -- it appealed and spoke to a much larger percentage of the internet reading audience than mainstream society would support outside of that filter.... in the waning years of the 20th Century, it was a safe bet that if someone had an internet connection in the first place, they'd find User Friendly funny."^[3]

On April Fools' Day 1999, the site appeared to be shut down permanently after a third party sued.^[17][18] In future years, the April 1st cartoon referenced back to the disruption that was caused.^[19][20]

In a 2001 interview, Frazer said that he was not handling fame well, and pretended not to be famous in order to keep his life normal. He said that his income came from sponsorship, advertising, and sales of printed collections.^[15] These compilations have been published by O'Reilly Media.^[21]

Since 2000, User Friendly had been published in a variety of newspapers, including The National Post in Canada and the Linux Journal magazine.^[22]

In a 2001 interview, Frazer estimated that about 40% of strip ideas came from reader submissions, and occasionally he would get submissions that he would use "unmodified".^[23] He also said that he educated himself on the operating system BSD in order to make informed jokes about it.^[15]

In 2009, Frazer was found to be copying punchlines found in the MetaFilter community. After one poster found a comment on MetaFilter that was similar to a User Friendly comic, users searched and found several other examples.^[24] Initially, Frazer posted on MetaFilter saying "I get a flurry of submissions and one-liners every week, and I haven't checked many of them at all, because I rarely had to in the past" but later admitted that he had taken quotes directly from the site.^[25][24] On his website, Frazer said, "I offered no attribution or asked for permission [for these punchlines], over the last couple of years I've infringed on the expression of ideas of some (who I think are) clever people. Plagiarized. My hypocrisy seems to know no bounds, as an infamous gunman was once heard saying. I sincerely apologize to my readers and to the original authors. I offer no excuses and accept full blame and responsibility. As a result, I'll be modifying the cartoons in question. No, it won't happen again. Yes, I've immersed myself in mild acid."^[26]

While published books still contain at least one cartoon with a punchline taken from MetaFilter, Frazer has removed these cartoons from the website, or updated them to quote and credit the source of the punchlines, and fans searched through the archives to ensure that none of the other punchlines have been plagiarized.^[27]

The strip went on hiatus from June 1, 2009^{[# 20]} to August 2009 for personal reasons.^{[# 21]} In this period, previous strips were re-posted.

A second hiatus lasted from December 1, 2009 until August 1, 2010, again for personal reasons. New cartoons, supplied by the community as part of a competition, started to appear as of August 2, 2010.^{[# 22]}

From November 1, 2010 through November 21, 2010, Illiad published a special "Remembrance Day story arc", and stated that it is "vague and at this point random" what will happen to the strip afterwards, that "going daily again is highly unlikely", but that "there are still many stories that I want to tell through UF, over time".^{[# 23]} Since then, previous comics have been re-posted on a daily basis.

After the de facto stop of publishing new content, three one-off comics commemoration special occasions were published:

• 19/03-2011:^{[# 24]} The Fukushima nuclear disaster
• 09/10-2011:^{[# 25]} The death of Steve Jobs
• 01/01-2012:^{[# 26]} The death of Dennis Ritchie

On 24 February 2022, Illiad announced that the website would be shut down soon, "at the end of this month. If not, it won't be much later than that."^[28]

At approximately midnight PST on the evening of 28 February 2022, the website was shut down.

User Friendly has received mixed reviews over the years.

In a 2008 review, Eric Burns of Websnark called it a "damned good comic strip", but felt it had several problems. Burns felt that the strip had not evolved in several years, saying "his strip is exactly the same today as it was in 1998... the same characters, the same humor, the same punchlines, the same punching bags as before." Burns said that characters learn no lessons, and that "[i]f Frazer uses copy and paste to put his characters in, he's been using the same clip art for the entire 21st century." Burns also criticised the stereotypical depiction of idiotic computer users as outdated. But fundamentally, Burns found the strip funny, saying anyone who had worked IT would likely find it funny, and even those who had not will find something in it amusing. Burns felt that some criticism of User Friendly came from seeing it as general webcomic, rather than one targeted at a specific audience of old-school IT geeks, and he considered that the targeted approach was a good business model.^[3]

Writer T Campbell declared JD Frazer's work as "ow[ing] a heavy debt to [Scott] Adams, but his 'nerdcore' was a purer sort: the jokes were often for nerds ONLY-- NO NON-TECHIES ALLOWD [sic]." He continued "He wasn't the first webtoonist to target his audience so precisely, but he was the first to do it on a daily schedule, and that kind of single-minded dedication is something most techies could appreciate. User Friendly set the tone for nerdcore strips to follow."^[29] Time magazine called User Friendly "a strip in the wry, verbal vein of Doonesbury...the humor is a combination of pop culture references and inside jokes straight outta the IT department."^[30] The strip was among the most notable of a wave of similar strips, including Help Desk by Christopher B. Wright,^[31] General Protection Fault by Jeffrey T. Darlington,^[32] The PC Weenies by Krishna Sadasivam,^[33] Geek & Poke by Oliver Widder,^[34] Working Daze by John Zakour, and The Joy of Tech by Liza Schmalcel and Bruce Evans.

Comic writer and artist Joe Zabel said that User Friendly "may be one of the earliest webcomics manifestation of the use of templates... renderings of the characters that are cut and pasted directly into the comic strip... I think the main significance of User Friendly is that in 1997 it was really, really crude in every respect. Horrible artwork, terrible storyline, zilch characterization, and extremely dull, obvious jokes. And yet it was a smash hit! I think this demonstrates that the public will embrace just about anything if it's free and the circumstances are right. And it indicates that new internet users of the time were really hungry, downright starving, for entertainment.... his current work [speaking in 2005] is comparatively slick and professional. But I suspect that his early work had enormous influence, because it encouraged thousands of people with few skills and little talent to jump into the webcomics field." Zabel also credited User Friendly's success in part to its "series mascot", Dust Puppy, saying that "the popular gag-a-day cartoons almost always have some kind of mascot."^[29]

The webcomic Penny Arcade produced a strip in 1999 just to criticise Frazer, saying "people will pass up steak once a week for crap every day."^[35] They also criticized the commercialism of the enterprise.^[36] By contrast, CNET included it on 2007 a list of "sidesplitting tech comics",^[33] Mashable included it in a 2009 list of the 20 best webcomics^[2] and Polygon listed it as one of the most influential webcomics of all time in 2018.^[37] It has also been noted by FromDev,^[38] Brainz,^[39] RiskOptics,^[40] DondeQ2,^[41] and Pingdom.^[31] CBR.com concluded the comic had aged poorly in a 2023 rundown.^[42]

Lawrence I. Charters appreciated the nature of the titles used for the published books.^[43] Francis Glassborow cited the specificity of the humour,^[44] which also lead Retro Activity to find the strip "difficult to recommend" along with the limited art style.^[45] Mike Kaltschnee also mentioned the weakness of the art, but was impressed at Illiad maintaining publication of a strip every day.^[46] "Webcomics: The Influence and Continuation of the Comix Revolution" described how the strip represented the counter-cultural aspects of the open-source software movement.^[47] Dustin Puryear observed how the strip represents the conflicts between the computer literate and newer less informed users.^[48] Christine Moellenberndt wrote about the online community spawned around the comic strip.^[49]

In 2007, User Friendly was part of an exhibit at The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art called Infinite Canvas: The Art of Webcomics.^[50]

Several cartoon compilations have been published:

• User Friendly, v1.0, Plan Nine Publishing, 2002, ISBN 1-929462-39-5 (collects earlier strips)
• User Friendly, O'Reilly, 1999, ISBN 1-56592-673-0 January 25, 1998 Archived July 5, 2013, at archive.today – December 25, 1998 (misses out December 20 Archived November 13, 2005, at the Wayback Machine and probably some others)
• Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell, O'Reilly, 2000, ISBN 1-56592-861-X January 3, 1999 – December 11, 1999
• The Root of All Evil, O'Reilly, 2001, ISBN 0-596-00193-2 January 1, 2000 – December 31, 2000
• Even Grues Get Full, O'Reilly, 2003, ISBN 0-596-00566-0 January 1, 2001 – November 17, 2001
• User Friendly – Die Deutsche Dialekt-Ausgabe (translation to several German dialects) ISBN 3-89721-380-X
• Ten Years of UserFriendly.Org, Manning Dec 2008, ISBN 978-1-935182-12-2 a 1000-page hardback collection of every script with some comments by the author.

• Frazer, JD ‘Illiad’, User Friendly (Website), archived from the original on August 1, 2001, retrieved September 4, 2001.
• UFies (User Friendly users and fans Website).
• User Friendly comic archive on Archive.org

Search engine from Google

"Google.com" redirects here. For the company itself, see Google.

 

Google Search

Google Search on desktop
Type of site	Web search engine
Available in	149 languages
Owner	Google
Revenue	Google Ads
URL	google.com
IPv6 support	Yes[1]
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Optional
Launched	1995; 30 years ago (1995) (first prototype) 1997; 28 years ago (1997) (final launch)
Current status	Online
Written in	Python C C++[2]

Google Search (also known simply as Google or Google.com) is a search engine operated by Google. It allows users to search for information on the Web by entering keywords or phrases. Google Search uses algorithms to analyze and rank websites based on their relevance to the search query. It is the most popular search engine worldwide.

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Google Search is the most-visited website in the world. As of 2020, Google Search has a 92% share of the global search engine market.^[3] Approximately 26.75% of Google's monthly global traffic comes from the United States, 4.44% from India, 4.4% from Brazil, 3.92% from the United Kingdom and 3.84% from Japan according to data provided by Similarweb.^[4]

The order of search results returned by Google is based, in part, on a priority rank system called "PageRank". Google Search also provides many different options for customized searches, using symbols to include, exclude, specify or require certain search behavior, and offers specialized interactive experiences, such as flight status and package tracking, weather forecasts, currency, unit, and time conversions, word definitions, and more.

The main purpose of Google Search is to search for text in publicly accessible documents offered by web servers, as opposed to other data, such as images or data contained in databases. It was originally developed in 1996 by Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Scott Hassan.^[5][6][7] The search engine would also be set up in the garage of Susan Wojcicki's Menlo Park home.^[8] In 2011, Google introduced "Google Voice Search" to search for spoken, rather than typed, words.^[9] In 2012, Google introduced a semantic search feature named Knowledge Graph.

Analysis of the frequency of search terms may indicate economic, social and health trends.^[10] Data about the frequency of use of search terms on Google can be openly inquired via Google Trends and have been shown to correlate with flu outbreaks and unemployment levels, and provide the information faster than traditional reporting methods and surveys. As of mid-2016, Google's search engine has begun to rely on deep neural networks.^[11]

In August 2024, a US judge in Virginia ruled that Google's search engine held an illegal monopoly over Internet search.^[12][13] The court found that Google maintained its market dominance by paying large amounts to phone-makers and browser-developers to make Google its default search engine.^[14]

Google indexes hundreds of terabytes of information from web pages.^[15] For websites that are currently down or otherwise not available, Google provides links to cached versions of the site, formed by the search engine's latest indexing of that page.^[16] Additionally, Google indexes some file types, being able to show users PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, certain Flash multimedia content, and plain text files.^[17] Users can also activate "SafeSearch", a filtering technology aimed at preventing explicit and pornographic content from appearing in search results.^[18]

Despite Google search's immense index, sources generally assume that Google is only indexing less than 5% of the total Internet, with the rest belonging to the deep web, inaccessible through its search tools.^[15][19][20]

In 2012, Google changed its search indexing tools to demote sites that had been accused of piracy.^[21] In October 2016, Gary Illyes, a webmaster trends analyst with Google, announced that the search engine would be making a separate, primary web index dedicated for mobile devices, with a secondary, less up-to-date index for desktop use. The change was a response to the continued growth in mobile usage, and a push for web developers to adopt a mobile-friendly version of their websites.^[22][23] In December 2017, Google began rolling out the change, having already done so for multiple websites.^[24]

In August 2009, Google invited web developers to test a new search architecture, codenamed "Caffeine", and give their feedback. The new architecture provided no visual differences in the user interface, but added significant speed improvements and a new "under-the-hood" indexing infrastructure. The move was interpreted in some quarters as a response to Microsoft's recent release of an upgraded version of its own search service, renamed Bing, as well as the launch of Wolfram Alpha, a new search engine based on "computational knowledge".^[25][26] Google announced completion of "Caffeine" on June 8, 2010, claiming 50% fresher results due to continuous updating of its index.^[27]

With "Caffeine", Google moved its back-end indexing system away from MapReduce and onto Bigtable, the company's distributed database platform.^[28][29]

In August 2018, Danny Sullivan from Google announced a broad core algorithm update. As per current analysis done by the industry leaders Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Land, the update was to drop down the medical and health-related websites that were not user friendly and were not providing good user experience. This is why the industry experts named it "Medic".^[30]

Google reserves very high standards for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) pages. This is because misinformation can affect users financially, physically, or emotionally. Therefore, the update targeted particularly those YMYL pages that have low-quality content and misinformation. This resulted in the algorithm targeting health and medical-related websites more than others. However, many other websites from other industries were also negatively affected.^[31]

By 2012, it handled more than 3.5 billion searches per day.^[32] In 2013 the European Commission found that Google Search favored Google's own products, instead of the best result for consumers' needs.^[33] In February 2015 Google announced a major change to its mobile search algorithm which would favor mobile friendly over other websites. Nearly 60% of Google searches come from mobile phones. Google says it wants users to have access to premium quality websites. Those websites which lack a mobile-friendly interface would be ranked lower and it is expected that this update will cause a shake-up of ranks. Businesses who fail to update their websites accordingly could see a dip in their regular websites traffic.^[34]

Google's rise was largely due to a patented algorithm called PageRank which helps rank web pages that match a given search string.^[35] When Google was a Stanford research project, it was nicknamed BackRub because the technology checks backlinks to determine a site's importance. Other keyword-based methods to rank search results, used by many search engines that were once more popular than Google, would check how often the search terms occurred in a page, or how strongly associated the search terms were within each resulting page. The PageRank algorithm instead analyzes human-generated links assuming that web pages linked from many important pages are also important. The algorithm computes a recursive score for pages, based on the weighted sum of other pages linking to them. PageRank is thought to correlate well with human concepts of importance. In addition to PageRank, Google, over the years, has added many other secret criteria for determining the ranking of resulting pages. This is reported to comprise over 250 different indicators,^[36][37] the specifics of which are kept secret to avoid difficulties created by scammers and help Google maintain an edge over its competitors globally.

PageRank was influenced by a similar page-ranking and site-scoring algorithm earlier used for RankDex, developed by Robin Li in 1996. Larry Page's patent for PageRank filed in 1998 includes a citation to Li's earlier patent. Li later went on to create the Chinese search engine Baidu in 2000.^[38][39]

In a potential hint of Google's future direction of their Search algorithm, Google's then chief executive Eric Schmidt, said in a 2007 interview with the Financial Times: "The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as 'What shall I do tomorrow?' and 'What job shall I take?'".^[40] Schmidt reaffirmed this during a 2010 interview with The Wall Street Journal: "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions, they want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."^[41]

Because Google is the most popular search engine, many webmasters attempt to influence their website's Google rankings. An industry of consultants has arisen to help websites increase their rankings on Google and other search engines. This field, called search engine optimization, attempts to discern patterns in search engine listings, and then develop a methodology for improving rankings to draw more searchers to their clients' sites. Search engine optimization encompasses both "on page" factors (like body copy, title elements, H1 heading elements and image alt attribute values) and Off Page Optimization factors (like anchor text and PageRank). The general idea is to affect Google's relevance algorithm by incorporating the keywords being targeted in various places "on page", in particular the title element and the body copy (note: the higher up in the page, presumably the better its keyword prominence and thus the ranking). Too many occurrences of the keyword, however, cause the page to look suspect to Google's spam checking algorithms. Google has published guidelines for website owners who would like to raise their rankings when using legitimate optimization consultants.^[42] It has been hypothesized, and, allegedly, is the opinion of the owner of one business about which there have been numerous complaints, that negative publicity, for example, numerous consumer complaints, may serve as well to elevate page rank on Google Search as favorable comments.^[43] The particular problem addressed in The New York Times article, which involved DecorMyEyes, was addressed shortly thereafter by an undisclosed fix in the Google algorithm. According to Google, it was not the frequently published consumer complaints about DecorMyEyes which resulted in the high ranking but mentions on news websites of events which affected the firm such as legal actions against it. Google Search Console helps to check for websites that use duplicate or copyright content.^[44]

In 2013, Google significantly upgraded its search algorithm with "Hummingbird". Its name was derived from the speed and accuracy of the hummingbird.^[45] The change was announced on September 26, 2013, having already been in use for a month.^[46] "Hummingbird" places greater emphasis on natural language queries, considering context and meaning over individual keywords.^[45] It also looks deeper at content on individual pages of a website, with improved ability to lead users directly to the most appropriate page rather than just a website's homepage.^[47] The upgrade marked the most significant change to Google search in years, with more "human" search interactions^[48] and a much heavier focus on conversation and meaning.^[45] Thus, web developers and writers were encouraged to optimize their sites with natural writing rather than forced keywords, and make effective use of technical web development for on-site navigation.^[49]

In 2023, drawing on internal Google documents disclosed as part of the United States v. Google LLC (2020) antitrust case, technology reporters claimed that Google Search was "bloated and overmonetized"^[50] and that the "semantic matching" of search queries put advertising profits before quality.^[51] Wired withdrew Megan Gray's piece after Google complained about alleged inaccuracies, while the author reiterated that «As stated in court, "A goal of Project Mercury was to increase commercial queries"».^[52]

In March 2024, Google announced a significant update to its core search algorithm and spam targeting, which is expected to wipe out 40 percent of all spam results.^[53] On March 20th, it was confirmed that the roll out of the spam update was complete.^[54]

On September 10, 2024, the European-based EU Court of Justice found that Google held an illegal monopoly with the way the company showed favoritism to its shopping search, and could not avoid paying €2.4 billion.^[55] The EU Court of Justice referred to Google's treatment of rival shopping searches as "discriminatory" and in violation of the Digital Markets Act.^[55]

At the top of the search page, the approximate result count and the response time two digits behind decimal is noted. Of search results, page titles and URLs, dates, and a preview text snippet for each result appears. Along with web search results, sections with images, news, and videos may appear.^[56] The length of the previewed text snipped was experimented with in 2015 and 2017.^[57][58]

"Universal search" was launched by Google on May 16, 2007, as an idea that merged the results from different kinds of search types into one. Prior to Universal search, a standard Google search would consist of links only to websites. Universal search, however, incorporates a wide variety of sources, including websites, news, pictures, maps, blogs, videos, and more, all shown on the same search results page.^[59][60] Marissa Mayer, then-vice president of search products and user experience, described the goal of Universal search as "we're attempting to break down the walls that traditionally separated our various search properties and integrate the vast amounts of information available into one simple set of search results.^[61]

In June 2017, Google expanded its search results to cover available job listings. The data is aggregated from various major job boards and collected by analyzing company homepages. Initially only available in English, the feature aims to simplify finding jobs suitable for each user.^[62][63]

In May 2009, Google announced that they would be parsing website microformats to populate search result pages with "Rich snippets". Such snippets include additional details about results, such as displaying reviews for restaurants and social media accounts for individuals.^[64]

In May 2016, Google expanded on the "Rich snippets" format to offer "Rich cards", which, similarly to snippets, display more information about results, but shows them at the top of the mobile website in a swipeable carousel-like format.^[65] Originally limited to movie and recipe websites in the United States only, the feature expanded to all countries globally in 2017.^[66]

The Knowledge Graph is a knowledge base used by Google to enhance its search engine's results with information gathered from a variety of sources.^[67] This information is presented to users in a box to the right of search results.^[68] Knowledge Graph boxes were added to Google's search engine in May 2012,^[67] starting in the United States, with international expansion by the end of the year.^[69] The information covered by the Knowledge Graph grew significantly after launch, tripling its original size within seven months,^[70] and being able to answer "roughly one-third" of the 100 billion monthly searches Google processed in May 2016.^[71] The information is often used as a spoken answer in Google Assistant^[72] and Google Home searches.^[73] The Knowledge Graph has been criticized for providing answers without source attribution.^[71]

A Google Knowledge Panel^[74] is a feature integrated into Google search engine result pages, designed to present a structured overview of entities such as individuals, organizations, locations, or objects directly within the search interface. This feature leverages data from Google's Knowledge Graph,^[75] a database that organizes and interconnects information about entities, enhancing the retrieval and presentation of relevant content to users.

The content within a Knowledge Panel^[76] is derived from various sources, including Wikipedia and other structured databases, ensuring that the information displayed is both accurate and contextually relevant. For instance, querying a well-known public figure may trigger a Knowledge Panel displaying essential details such as biographical information, birthdate, and links to social media profiles or official websites.

The primary objective of the Google Knowledge Panel is to provide users with immediate, factual answers, reducing the need for extensive navigation across multiple web pages.

In May 2017, Google enabled a new "Personal" tab in Google Search, letting users search for content in their Google accounts' various services, including email messages from Gmail and photos from Google Photos.^[77][78]

Google Discover, previously known as Google Feed, is a personalized stream of articles, videos, and other news-related content. The feed contains a "mix of cards" which show topics of interest based on users' interactions with Google, or topics they choose to follow directly.^[79] Cards include, "links to news stories, YouTube videos, sports scores, recipes, and other content based on what [Google] determined you're most likely to be interested in at that particular moment."^[79] Users can also tell Google they're not interested in certain topics to avoid seeing future updates.

Google Discover launched in December 2016^[80] and received a major update in July 2017.^[81] Another major update was released in September 2018, which renamed the app from Google Feed to Google Discover, updated the design, and adding more features.^[82]

Discover can be found on a tab in the Google app and by swiping left on the home screen of certain Android devices. As of 2019, Google will not allow political campaigns worldwide to target their advertisement to people to make them vote.^[83]

At the 2023 Google I/O event in May, Google unveiled Search Generative Experience (SGE), an experimental feature in Google Search available through Google Labs which produces AI-generated summaries in response to search prompts.^[84] This was part of Google's wider efforts to counter the unprecedented rise of generative AI technology, ushered by OpenAI's launch of ChatGPT, which sent Google executives to a panic due to its potential threat to Google Search.^[85] Google added the ability to generate images in October.^[86] At I/O in 2024, the feature was upgraded and renamed AI Overviews.^[87]

AI Overviews was rolled out to users in the United States in May 2024.^[87] The feature faced public criticism in the first weeks of its rollout after errors from the tool went viral online. These included results suggesting users add glue to pizza or eat rocks,^[88] or incorrectly claiming Barack Obama is Muslim.^[89] Google described these viral errors as "isolated examples", maintaining that most AI Overviews provide accurate information.^[88][90] Two weeks after the rollout of AI Overviews, Google made technical changes and scaled back the feature, pausing its use for some health-related queries and limiting its reliance on social media posts.^[91] Scientific American has criticised the system on environmental grounds, as such a search uses 30 times more energy than a conventional one.^[92] It has also been criticized for condensing information from various sources, making it less likely for people to view full articles and websites. When it was announced in May 2024, Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News/Media Alliance was quoted as saying "This will be catastrophic to our traffic, as marketed by Google to further satisfy user queries, leaving even less incentive to click through so that we can monetize our content."^[93]

In August 2024, AI Overviews were rolled out in the UK, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil, with local language support.^[94] On October 28, 2024, AI Overviews was rolled out to 100 more countries, including Australia and New Zealand.^[95]

In late June 2011, Google introduced a new look to the Google homepage in order to boost the use of the Google+ social tools.^[96]

One of the major changes was replacing the classic navigation bar with a black one. Google's digital creative director Chris Wiggins explains: "We're working on a project to bring you a new and improved Google experience, and over the next few months, you'll continue to see more updates to our look and feel."^[97] The new navigation bar has been negatively received by a vocal minority.^[98]

In November 2013, Google started testing yellow labels for advertisements displayed in search results, to improve user experience. The new labels, highlighted in yellow color, and aligned to the left of each sponsored link help users differentiate between organic and sponsored results.^[99]

On December 15, 2016, Google rolled out a new desktop search interface that mimics their modular mobile user interface. The mobile design consists of a tabular design that highlights search features in boxes. and works by imitating the desktop Knowledge Graph real estate, which appears in the right-hand rail of the search engine result page, these featured elements frequently feature Twitter carousels, People Also Search For, and Top Stories (vertical and horizontal design) modules. The Local Pack and Answer Box were two of the original features of the Google SERP that were primarily showcased in this manner, but this new layout creates a previously unseen level of design consistency for Google results.^[100]

Google offers a "Google Search" mobile app for Android and iOS devices.^[101] The mobile apps exclusively feature Google Discover and a "Collections" feature, in which the user can save for later perusal any type of search result like images, bookmarks or map locations into groups.^[102] Android devices were introduced to a preview of the feed, perceived as related to Google Now, in December 2016,^[103] while it was made official on both Android and iOS in July 2017.^[104][105]

In April 2016, Google updated its Search app on Android to feature "Trends"; search queries gaining popularity appeared in the autocomplete box along with normal query autocompletion.^[106] The update received significant backlash, due to encouraging search queries unrelated to users' interests or intentions, prompting the company to issue an update with an opt-out option.^[107] In September 2017, the Google Search app on iOS was updated to feature the same functionality.^[108]

In December 2017, Google released "Google Go", an app designed to enable use of Google Search on physically smaller and lower-spec devices in multiple languages. A Google blog post about designing "India-first" products and features explains that it is "tailor-made for the millions of people in [India and Indonesia] coming online for the first time".^[109]

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.^[110] 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), the ability to filter results to a date range,^[111] and many more.

Google search accepts queries as normal text, as well as individual keywords.^[112] It automatically corrects apparent misspellings by default (while offering to use the original spelling as a selectable alternative), and provides the same results regardless of capitalization.^[112] For more customized results, one can use a wide variety of operators, including, but not limited to:^[113][114]

• OR or | – Search for webpages containing one of two similar queries, such as marathon OR race
• AND – Search for webpages containing two similar queries, such as marathon AND runner
• - (minus sign) – Exclude a word or a phrase, so that "apple -tree" searches where word "tree" is not used
• "" – Force inclusion of a word or a phrase, such as "tallest building"
• * – Placeholder symbol allowing for any substitute words in the context of the query, such as "largest * in the world"
• .. – Search within a range of numbers, such as "camera $50..$100"
• site: – Search within a specific website, such as "site:youtube.com"
• define: – Search for definitions for a word or phrase, such as "define:phrase"
• stocks: – See the stock price of investments, such as "stocks:googl"
• related: – Find web pages related to specific URL addresses, such as "related:www.wikipedia.org"
• cache: – Highlights the search-words within the cached pages, so that "cache:www.google.com xxx" shows cached content with word "xxx" highlighted.
• ( ) – Group operators and searches, such as (marathon OR race) AND shoes
• filetype: or ext: – Search for specific file types, such as filetype:gif
• before: – Search for before a specific date, such as spacex before:2020-08-11
• after: – Search for after a specific date, such as iphone after:2007-06-29
• @ – Search for a specific word on social media networks, such as "@twitter"

Google also offers a Google Advanced Search page with a web interface to access the advanced features without needing to remember the special operators.^[115]

Google applies query expansion to submitted search queries, using techniques to deliver results that it considers "smarter" than the query users actually submitted. This technique involves several steps, including:^[116]

• Word stemming – Certain words can be reduced so other, similar terms, are also found in results, so that "translator" can also search for "translation"
• Acronyms – Searching for abbreviations can also return results about the name in its full length, so that "NATO" can show results for "North Atlantic Treaty Organization"
• Misspellings – Google will often suggest correct spellings for misspelled words
• Synonyms – In most cases where a word is incorrectly used in a phrase or sentence, Google search will show results based on the correct synonym
• Translations – The search engine can, in some instances, suggest results for specific words in a different language
• Ignoring words – In some search queries containing extraneous or insignificant words, Google search will simply drop those specific words from the query

In 2008, Google started to give users autocompleted search suggestions in a list below the search bar while typing, originally with the approximate result count previewed for each listed search suggestion.^[117]

Google's homepage includes a button labeled "I'm Feeling Lucky". This feature originally allowed users to type in their search query, click the button and be taken directly to the first result, bypassing the search results page. Clicking it while leaving the search box empty opens Google's archive of Doodles.^[118] With the 2010 announcement of Google Instant, an automatic feature that immediately displays relevant results as users are typing in their query, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button disappears, requiring that users opt-out of Instant results through search settings to keep using the "I'm Feeling Lucky" functionality.^[119] In 2012, "I'm Feeling Lucky" was changed to serve as an advertisement for Google services; users hover their computer mouse over the button, it spins and shows an emotion ("I'm Feeling Puzzled" or "I'm Feeling Trendy", for instance), and, when clicked, takes users to a Google service related to that emotion.^[120]

Tom Chavez of "Rapt", a firm helping to determine a website's advertising worth, estimated in 2007 that Google lost $110 million in revenue per year due to use of the button, which bypasses the advertisements found on the search results page.^[121]

Besides the main text-based search-engine function of Google search, it also offers multiple quick, interactive features. These include, but are not limited to:^{[122][123][124]}

• Calculator
• Time zone, currency, and unit conversions
• Word translations
• Flight status
• Local film showings
• Weather forecasts
• Population and unemployment rates
• Package tracking
• Word definitions
• Metronome
• Roll a die
• "Do a barrel roll" (search page spins)
• "Askew" (results show up sideways)

During Google's developer conference, Google I/O, in May 2013, the company announced that users on Google Chrome and ChromeOS would be able to have the browser initiate an audio-based search by saying "OK Google", with no button presses required. After having the answer presented, users can follow up with additional, contextual questions; an example include initially asking "OK Google, will it be sunny in Santa Cruz this weekend?", hearing a spoken answer, and reply with "how far is it from here?"^[125][126] An update to the Chrome browser with voice-search functionality rolled out a week later, though it required a button press on a microphone icon rather than "OK Google" voice activation.^[127] Google released a browser extension for the Chrome browser, named with a "beta" tag for unfinished development, shortly thereafter.^[128] In May 2014, the company officially added "OK Google" into the browser itself;^[129] they removed it in October 2015, citing low usage, though the microphone icon for activation remained available.^[130] In May 2016, 20% of search queries on mobile devices were done through voice.^[131]

Google Videos

Screenshot Google Videos homepage as of 2016
Type of site	Video search engine
Available in	Multilingual
Owner	Google
URL	www.google.com/videohp
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Recommended
Launched	August 20, 2012; 12 years ago (2012-08-20)

In addition to its tool for searching web pages, Google also provides services for searching images, Usenet newsgroups, news websites, videos (Google Videos), searching by locality, maps, and items for sale online. Google Videos allows searching the World Wide Web for video clips.^[132] The service evolved from Google Video, Google's discontinued video hosting service that also allowed to search the web for video clips.^[132]

In 2012, Google has indexed over 30 trillion web pages, and received 100 billion queries per month.^[133] It also caches much of the content that it indexes. Google operates other tools and services including Google News, Google Shopping, Google Maps, Google Custom Search, Google Earth, Google Docs, Picasa (discontinued), Panoramio (discontinued), YouTube, Google Translate, Google Blog Search and Google Desktop Search (discontinued^[134]).

There are also products available from Google that are not directly search-related. Gmail, for example, is a webmail application, but still includes search features; Google Browser Sync does not offer any search facilities, although it aims to organize your browsing time.

In 2009, Google claimed that a search query requires altogether about 1 kJ or 0.0003 kW·h,^[135] which is enough to raise the temperature of one liter of water by 0.24 °C. According to green search engine Ecosia, the industry standard for search engines is estimated to be about 0.2 grams of CO₂ emission per search.^[136] Google's 40,000 searches per second translate to 8 kg CO₂ per second or over 252 million kilos of CO₂ per year.^[137]

On certain occasions, the logo on Google's webpage will change to a special version, known as a "Google Doodle". This is a picture, drawing, animation, or interactive game that includes the logo. It is usually done for a special event or day although not all of them are well known.^[138] Clicking on the Doodle links to a string of Google search results about the topic. The first was a reference to the Burning Man Festival in 1998,^[139][140] and others have been produced for the birthdays of notable people like Albert Einstein, historical events like the interlocking Lego block's 50th anniversary and holidays like Valentine's Day.^[141] Some Google Doodles have interactivity beyond a simple search, such as the famous "Google Pac-Man" version that appeared on May 21, 2010.

Google has been criticized for placing long-term cookies on users' machines to store preferences, a tactic which also enables them to track a user's search terms and retain the data for more than a year.^[142]

Since 2012, Google Inc. has globally introduced encrypted connections for most of its clients, to bypass governative blockings of the commercial and IT services.^[143]

In 2003, The New York Times complained about Google's indexing, claiming that Google's caching of content on its site infringed its copyright for the content.^[144] In both Field v. Google and Parker v. Google, the United States District Court of Nevada ruled in favor of Google.^[145][146]

This section needs expansion. You can help by making an edit requestadding to it . (May 2024)

A 2019 New York Times article on Google Search showed that images of child sexual abuse had been found on Google and that the company had been reluctant at times to remove them.^[147]

Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. For approximately 40 minutes on January 31, 2009, all search results were mistakenly classified as malware and could therefore not be clicked; instead a warning message was displayed and the user was required to enter the requested URL manually. The bug was caused by human error.^{[148][149][150][151]} The URL of "/" (which expands to all URLs) was mistakenly added to the malware patterns file.^[149][150]

In 2007, a group of researchers observed a tendency for users to rely exclusively on Google Search for finding information, writing that "With the Google interface the user gets the impression that the search results imply a kind of totality. ... In fact, one only sees a small part of what one could see if one also integrates other research tools."^[152]

In 2011, Google Search query results have been shown by Internet activist Eli Pariser to be tailored to users, effectively isolating users in what he defined as a filter bubble. Pariser holds algorithms used in search engines such as Google Search responsible for catering "a personal ecosystem of information".^[153] Although contrasting views have mitigated the potential threat of "informational dystopia" and questioned the scientific nature of Pariser's claims,^[154] filter bubbles have been mentioned to account for the surprising results of the U.S. presidential election in 2016 alongside fake news and echo chambers, suggesting that Facebook and Google have designed personalized online realities in which "we only see and hear what we like".^[155]

In 2012, the US Federal Trade Commission fined Google US$22.5 million for violating their agreement not to violate the privacy of users of Apple's Safari web browser.^[156] The FTC was also continuing to investigate if Google's favoring of their own services in their search results violated antitrust regulations.^[157]

In a November 2023 disclosure, during the ongoing antitrust trial against Google, an economics professor at the University of Chicago revealed that Google pays Apple 36% of all search advertising revenue generated when users access Google through the Safari browser. This revelation reportedly caused Google's lead attorney to cringe visibly.^{[citation needed]} The revenue generated from Safari users has been kept confidential, but the 36% figure suggests that it is likely in the tens of billions of dollars.

Both Apple and Google have argued that disclosing the specific terms of their search default agreement would harm their competitive positions. However, the court ruled that the information was relevant to the antitrust case and ordered its disclosure. This revelation has raised concerns about the dominance of Google in the search engine market and the potential anticompetitive effects of its agreements with Apple.^[158]

Google search engine robots are programmed to use algorithms that understand and predict human behavior. The book, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code^[159] by Ruha Benjamin talks about human bias as a behavior that the Google search engine can recognize. In 2016, some users Google searched "three Black teenagers" and images of criminal mugshots of young African American teenagers came up. Then, the users searched "three White teenagers" and were presented with photos of smiling, happy teenagers. They also searched for "three Asian teenagers", and very revealing photos of Asian girls and women appeared. Benjamin concluded that these results reflect human prejudice and views on different ethnic groups. A group of analysts explained the concept of a racist computer program: "The idea here is that computers, unlike people, can't be racist but we're increasingly learning that they do in fact take after their makers ... Some experts believe that this problem might stem from the hidden biases in the massive piles of data that the algorithms process as they learn to recognize patterns ... reproducing our worst values".^[159]

On August 5, 2024, Google lost a lawsuit which started in 2020 in D.C. Circuit Court, with Judge Amit Mehta finding that the company had an illegal monopoly over Internet search.^[160] This monopoly was held to be in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act.^[161] Google has said it will appeal the ruling^[162], though they did propose to loosen search deals with Apple and others requiring them to set Google as the default search engine.^[163]

As people talk about "googling" rather than searching, the company has taken some steps to defend its trademark, in an effort to prevent it from becoming a generic trademark.^[164][165] This has led to lawsuits, threats of lawsuits, and the use of euphemisms, such as calling Google Search a famous web search engine.^[166]

Until May 2013, Google Search had offered a feature to translate search queries into other languages. A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land that "Removing features is always tough, but we do think very hard about each decision and its implications for our users. Unfortunately, this feature never saw much pick up".^[167]

Instant search was announced in September 2010 as a feature that displayed suggested results while the user typed in their search query, initially only in select countries or to registered users.^[168] The primary advantage of the new system was its ability to save time, with Marissa Mayer, then-vice president of search products and user experience, proclaiming that the feature would save 2–5 seconds per search, elaborating that "That may not seem like a lot at first, but it adds up. With Google Instant, we estimate that we'll save our users 11 hours with each passing second!"^[169] Matt Van Wagner of Search Engine Land wrote that "Personally, I kind of like Google Instant and I think it represents a natural evolution in the way search works", and also praised Google's efforts in public relations, writing that "With just a press conference and a few well-placed interviews, Google has parlayed this relatively minor speed improvement into an attention-grabbing front-page news story".^[170] The upgrade also became notable for the company switching Google Search's underlying technology from HTML to AJAX.^[171]

Instant Search could be disabled via Google's "preferences" menu for those who didn't want its functionality.^[172]

The publication 2600: The Hacker Quarterly compiled a list of words that Google Instant did not show suggested results for, with a Google spokesperson giving the following statement to Mashable:^[173]

There are several reasons you may not be seeing search queries for a particular topic. Among other things, we apply a narrow set of removal policies for pornography, violence, and hate speech. It's important to note that removing queries from Autocomplete is a hard problem, and not as simple as blacklisting particular terms and phrases.

In search, we get more than one billion searches each day. Because of this, we take an algorithmic approach to removals, and just like our search algorithms, these are imperfect. We will continue to work to improve our approach to removals in Autocomplete, and are listening carefully to feedback from our users.

Our algorithms look not only at specific words, but compound queries based on those words, and across all languages. So, for example, if there's a bad word in Russian, we may remove a compound word including the transliteration of the Russian word into English. We also look at the search results themselves for given queries. So, for example, if the results for a particular query seem pornographic, our algorithms may remove that query from Autocomplete, even if the query itself wouldn't otherwise violate our policies. This system is neither perfect nor instantaneous, and we will continue to work to make it better.

PC Magazine discussed the inconsistency in how some forms of the same topic are allowed; for instance, "lesbian" was blocked, while "gay" was not, and "cocaine" was blocked, while "crack" and "heroin" were not. The report further stated that seemingly normal words were also blocked due to pornographic innuendos, most notably "scat", likely due to having two completely separate contextual meanings, one for music and one for a sexual practice.^[174]

On July 26, 2017, Google removed Instant results, due to a growing number of searches on mobile devices, where interaction with search, as well as screen sizes, differ significantly from a computer.^[175][176]

Instant previews[edit]

"Instant previews" allowed previewing screenshots of search results' web pages without having to open them. The feature was introduced in November 2010 to the desktop website and removed in April 2013 citing low usage.^[177][178]

Various search engines provide encrypted Web search facilities. In May 2010 Google rolled out SSL-encrypted web search.^[179] The encrypted search was accessed at encrypted.google.com^[180] However, the web search is encrypted via Transport Layer Security (TLS) by default today, thus every search request should be automatically encrypted if TLS is supported by the web browser.^[181] On its support website, Google announced that the address encrypted.google.com would be turned off April 30, 2018, stating that all Google products and most new browsers use HTTPS connections as the reason for the discontinuation.^[182]

Google Real-Time Search was a feature of Google Search in which search results also sometimes included real-time information from sources such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and news websites.^[183] The feature was introduced on December 7, 2009,^[184] and went offline on July 2, 2011, after the deal with Twitter expired.^[185] Real-Time Search included Facebook status updates beginning on February 24, 2010.^[186] A feature similar to Real-Time Search was already available on Microsoft's Bing search engine, which showed results from Twitter and Facebook.^[187] The interface for the engine showed a live, descending "river" of posts in the main region (which could be paused or resumed), while a bar chart metric of the frequency of posts containing a certain search term or hashtag was located on the right hand corner of the page above a list of most frequently reposted posts and outgoing links. Hashtag search links were also supported, as were "promoted" tweets hosted by Twitter (located persistently on top of the river) and thumbnails of retweeted image or video links.

In January 2011, geolocation links of posts were made available alongside results in Real-Time Search. In addition, posts containing syndicated or attached shortened links were made searchable by the link: query option. In July 2011, Real-Time Search became inaccessible, with the Real-Time link in the Google sidebar disappearing and a custom 404 error page generated by Google returned at its former URL. Google originally suggested that the interruption was temporary and related to the launch of Google+;^[188] they subsequently announced that it was due to the expiry of a commercial arrangement with Twitter to provide access to tweets.^[189]

• List of search engines by popularity – Software system for finding relevant information on the WebPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• Timeline of Google Search
• Censorship by Google § Google Search
• Google (verb) – Transitive verb, meaning to search for something using the Google search engine
• Dragonfly (search engine) – Prototype Internet search engine to comply with Chinese censorship requirements
• Google bombing – Practice that causes a webpage to have a high rank in Google
• Google Panda – Change to Google's search results ranking algorithm
• Google Penguin – Google search engine algorithm update
• Googlewhack – Contest to find a Google Search query that returns a single result
• Halalgoogling – Islamic search engine blocking haram content
• Prabhakar Raghavan – American computer scientist
• Reunion (advertisement) – Google India advertisement for Google SearchPages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback
• List of search engines
• Comparison of web search engines
• History of Google
• List of Google products

• Official website
• Google Search home
• Google Trends home