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.
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
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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