IndustryGoogle Upgrades Punctuation Search Results

Google Upgrades Punctuation Search Results

Google has updated its search results for queries involving punctuation marks and symbols. Though not perfect, searching for the symbol equivalent of a period, comma, carat, percent sign and more punctuation marks now will return search results.

Google has updated its search results for queries involving punctuation marks and symbols. Searching for the symbol equivalent of a period, comma, carat, percent sign and more symbols now will return search results – though they aren’t always exactly relevant, Google Operating System reported.

google-full-stop-period-serp

Punctuation marks now generating search results, generally where the Wikipedia page about the symbol ranks as the top link, include:

  • . (full stop/period)
  • , (comma)
  • : (colon) – however, the colon that is a piece of the large intestine currently outranks the punctuation mark of the same  name
  • ; (semicolon)
  • # (number sign)
  • % (percent sign)
  • @ (at sign)
  • ^ (caret)
  • ( ) { } [ ] (bracket) – parentheses, brackets and curly brackets are all combined into the same search result
  • ~ (tilde)
  • | (vertical bar)
  • “ (quotation marks)
  • < (less-than sign)
  • > (greater-than sign)
  • $ (dollar sign)

Other symbols and punctuation marks that Google can recognize and will return results for:

  • ! (exclamation point)
  • ‘ (apostrophe)
  • & (ampersand)
  • _ (underscore)
  • – (minus sign)
  • + (plus sign)
  • = (equals sign)
  • (backslash)
  • / (slash) – however, guitarist Slash currently outranks the punctuation mark of the forward slash

slash-google-serp

One symbol Google still doesn’t return results for is the asterisk (*).

On Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines, these punctuation searches will result in a message that no results were found.

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