Google Search: Web search engine, Google, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Translation, PageRank, Spam (electronic), Search engine optimization, History of Google, List of Google products

Google search is a web search engine owned by Google Inc. and is the most-used search engine on the Web. Google receives several hundred million queries each day through its various services. Google search was originally developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1997. Beyond the original word-search capability, Google Search provides more than 22 special features, such as: synonyms; weather forecasts; time zones; stock quotes; maps; earthquake data; movie showtimes; airports; home listings; sports scores, etc. (see below: Special features). There are special features for numbers: prices; temperatures; money/unit conversions ("10.5 cm in inches"); calculations ( 3*4+sqrt(6)-pi/2 ); package tracking; patents; area codes; plus rudimentary language translation of displayed pages. A Google search-results page is ordered by a priority rank called a "PageRank" which is kept secret to avoid spammers from forcing their pages to the top. Google Search provides many options for customized search (see below: Search options), such as: exclusion ("-xx"), inclusion ("+xx"), alternatives ("xx OR yy"), and wildcard matching ("xx*").