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If you want to temporarily turn on Google's SafeSearch, you can do that without opening the settings page. Just click the gear icon and select "turn on SafeSearch". When SafeSearch is enabled, you'll see a message next to gear button: "SafeSearch on". To disable it, click the same button and select "turn off SafeSearch".


"With SafeSearch, you can help prevent adult content from appearing in your search results. No filter is 100 percent accurate, but SafeSearch should help you avoid most of this type of material," explains Google.

If you're logged in, search settings are saved to your account and used for all devices. You can also go to the settings page and enable "Filter explicit results"

Remember the timer feature that was available for a few days last year and then quickly removed by Google? It's back now: it only works in the desktop Google search interface and it now has a full screen option. Right now, it seems to be an experimental feature.

Here are some examples of searches you can use: [set timer for 30 seconds], [set timer for 10 minutes and 10 seconds], [set timer for an hour and a half], [timer for 30 seconds], [timer 30 seconds], [timer 30 sec], [timer 23 hours 59 min 59 sec]. If you search for [set timer] or [timer], Google defaults to 5 minutes.


There's also a fullscreen mode:


Here's a video:


{ Thanks, Jonah. }

Sometimes Google's files reveal internal information. Here's some debug info for Google Search: it looks like many search features are actually server-side plugins and Google measures the time taken to load them. There are plugins for social posts, knowledge panels, rich snippets, product ads, forum clusters, Gmail results, health results, hacked sites, hashtags, empty results, science links, Korea features and more. The debug information is provided by a Java plugin (JvmInfoPlugin).

Click the image to see a bigger version.


{ Thanks, Florian K. }

Google's stock card that's displayed when you search for [GOOG], [TSLA], [Microsoft stock] and other similar queries is now a lot bigger. Tabs are placed above the chart and you can get the stock price at any time by mousing over the chart or tapping it.


Drag the dotted line to get the price variation.


Another change is that the links to Google Finance, Yahoo Finance and MSN Money have been removed.

{ Thanks, Jérôme. }

Google used to only answer simple questions like "who's the prime minister of Canada?" or "what's the population of China?". Thanks to the Knowledge Graph project, Google can answer more complicated questions like "who played Batman?", "what's the latest album of Celine Dion?", "what are the main attractions in Spain?".

Now Google shows direct answers for even more complex questions, but this seems to be limited to the US. Here's an example of question that doesn't have a definitive answer: "what's the distance between Earth and Mars?". I picked a shorter version of the query: "distance to the Mars." Google shows a snippet from a page that answers the question and highlights the distances. Usually, the page is in the first 10 search results and Google shows an extended snippet.


Here's another question: "why is the sky blue?".


Why is the Red Sea called this way? Google has the answer.


Google also answers: "how many work days in a year?", "who owns Lancia?", "who ended world war 2?", "who celebrates presidents day?", "how many countries are there?".


The answers aren't always accurate and sometimes they're incomplete (Will Smith has 3 kids):



While Google's quick answers are often useful, it's a good idea to check if they're accurate.

Google has an experiment that hides the Knowledge Graph sidebar, so it no longer shows information about famous people, companies, plants, cars, movies, books and more.


To try this experiment, install a cookie manager extension like "Edit This Cookie" for Chrome or Cookies Manager+ for Firefox, go to google.com and change the value of the NID cookie to:

67=Pj2b01uyf7hJnPvNoPECEnzlbCoXch_13GxuSVeSSyRdm_irfKzVaizXIE5svj3Qw1985iU4waenQh_Qy-BrE4WOtZ5Zoz9T4Kl1e1DtwJL4Xy0-JBcW_Z9IOKdd1H5Z


If you use "Edit This Cookie", don't forget to click "Submit changes". Delete the NID cookie to opt-out from the experiment.


{ Thanks, Rubén. }

This is a strange bug. For many navigational queries, Google only returns about 100 search results and shows a message like this: "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 117 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included." If you click the link, you'll be sent back to the first page of results and you'll be able to see more than 100 results (but not 1000). You can also add "&filter=0" to the search URL.


Changing the number of results to 100 in Google's settings page makes this more obvious: only 35 results for [cnet].


While the duplicate filter is not new, it was used to hide results that were redundant (for example: the same press release published by multiple sites). It's hard to believe that Google can't find more than 117 relevant results for [Google], 120 results for [Facebook], 86 results for [YouTube], 75 results for [Yahoo] and [Wikipedia].




When you search for [Yahoo], Google returns a lot of results from yahoo.com and Google's duplication filter stops showing results because they appear to be redundant. There's a conflict between two opposite principles: showing diverse results and showing many results from the most relevant sites.

Here's a page of almost identical search results that probably triggered the filter:


Another issue is that there are many spam pages, irellevant results and pages in foreign languages. Here are some examples for [Amazon]:



Some irrelevant results for [YouTube]:


Google needs to fix this bug and show more diverse results.

{ Thanks, Joren. }

A few months ago, I wrote about Google's directions card. You can find the distance between two places and the driving directions directly from Google Search. Just search for [directions from START_ADDRESS to END_ADDRESS] or [distance from START_ADDRESS to END_ADDRESS].

But what happens when Google can't provide driving directions or there's no way to get from A to B by car? Google has a backup card that's now displayed when you search for [distance from START_ADDRESS to END_ADDRESS] and there are no driving directions. Here's an example: [distance from Easter Island to Galapagos Islands].


Another example: [distance from New England to England].


"The next time you're killing time with friends or family, name two spots on the planet - say, Hawaii and Siberia. Get everyone’s best guess on exactly how far apart they are - 2,000 miles? 5,000? 8,000? Then pull up the Google Search app on your phone and ask, 'How far is it from Hawaii to Siberia?', and there's your answer. (This 'as the crow flies' distance is a new Google Search feature that works for far-flung locales, beyond what you can drive or walk)," explains Google.

There are many ways you can ask Google:

* distance from A to B
* distance A to B
* distance between A and B
* miles from A to B
* miles A to B
* how far is it from A to B?
* how far is it between A and B?


Here's a different example: [how far is it from Amman to Damascus]. This time, Google can't provide driving directions (unlike Bing).




Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to switch from miles to kilometres without having to do an additional conversion.

Google removed a few specialized search options that were usually displayed in the "more" drop-down: recipes, patents, discussions, blogs, places. The list of links to services like Maps, Images, News, Flights, Shopping is reordered based on your query. This isn't a new idea, it was implemented a long time ago by Google, but now it's used more often.




{ Thanks, Rubén and Max. }

After a few months of experiments, Google's search pages now show the name of the site next to the URL. If you click the name, you'll see a small card with information from Wikipedia, including the logo, the owner, the year when it was founded and some awards.

"You'll see this extra information when a site is widely recognized as notable online, when there is enough information to show or when the content may be handy for you. The information you'll see is based on the Knowledge Graph, Google's interconnected understanding of the things that exist in the world. As we expand the Knowledge Graph, we expect to give you more information about more websites - making it easier for you to choose the right result," informs Google.





If your site, organization or company doesn't have a Wikipedia page, no info card will be displayed.

Google experiments with displaying a search box next to sites like Google Finance, Yahoo Finance, Reuters. There's a button with the following label: "get quotes" and you're supposed to use this feature if you want to search for share prices.

For example, when you type [Google] or [GOOG], you're sent to the right page from Google Finance, Yahoo Finance and other financial sites. If you search for [computers], you'll get a search results page from the financial site. Is this the first time when Google shows a search box and doesn't return its own results?



I checked the source page and it says that it's a rich snippet, just like those that are used for reviews, music, events, products.

{ via Rubén }

Back in 2009, when HTC HD2 was released, many people complained that it had a huge screen: a 4.3-inch display. Now it seems quite small. Even iPhone's 3.5-inch display seemed very big back in 2007. As you can see, context matters and it puts things into perspective.

When searching Google for [Saturn size], you used to get an answer that was useful, but not that revealing. So the radius is 58,232 km (36,184 miles). It's obviously very large, but how does it compare to other planets? Now Google shows other planets and their size below the answer.


Search for [Earth mass] and Google shows that Venus has almost the same mass, while Jupiter's mass is 317.8 times bigger.


The instant answer for [Earth surface area] confirms that Earth and Venus are close in size.


What about gravity? Pretty close.


"The solar system is a pretty big place. To get a quick refresh on astronomy, you can ask Google 'What is the surface area of Earth?' and find out that it's 196.9 million square miles. But how BIG is that? Clearly not as large as some of our waistlines post-holidays—but is it larger or smaller than Jupiter? The size of Earth makes more sense when considered relative to the surface area of other planets; Earth is similar in size to Venus but more than 100 times smaller than Jupiter! Google now provides these comparisons, helping you understand the world (or solar system) around you," informs Google.

For now, this feature is only available for astronomy-related questions. You can find some similar comparisons when you search for things like [China GDP] or [India population].

Google's mobile search interface shows some special decorations when you search for [Christmas], [Kwanzaa] or some queries that include them.





They're not animated like the desktop decorations, but they fill the entire search results page.




Google had a lot of festive decorations and Easter Eggs this holiday seasons: Hanukkah and Festivus, Christmas, Karaoke player for carols, Google Maps costume.

{ Thanks, Sterling. }