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Find on this site:

    1. You may have encountered a squatter with an address similar to Google's. Occasionally, individuals will register domain names that are one letter off from a well-known URL in hopes of attracting those who make mistakes in their typing. Please be sure to enter www.google.com into your browser and the pop-ups may go away.
    2. You may have encountered pop-up ads that are designed to be triggered by web searches performed. These tiny "time bombs" can be planted in your browser by any number of software programs that promise to enhance the speed or performance of your web browser. A brief description of these programs can be found in this article: http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,48177,00.html.

      If you are experiencing pop-ups generated by one of these malicious programs, you may need to remove it from your computer. One program claiming to perform this service is available at http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-10106-108-63806.html. We have no relationship with the individuals who created this software and cannot vouch for it ourselves.
    3. Another possibility is that you visited a site that launched pop-up windows in the background. These ads are known in the advertising industry as "pop-unders." When you came to Google, the windows may have become visible. Again, we do not condone this practice and do not allow it on Google.

If you'd like more information on the advertising we do accept at Google, you'll find it by visiting this page: http://www.google.com/ads/. We wish you luck in your quest to quell pop-ups.

How do I narrow my search?

Sometimes a search is in the right neighborhood but is overcrowded with too many irrelevant results. To refine your search, try doing a new search in which you add more words to your query. This will return a set of results that more closely matches what you wanted to find. You can also exclude words by putting the "-" operator immediately in front of each word you don't want to show up in your results.

How can I restrict my search to specific extensions, e.g., .edu?

Some words, when followed by a colon, have special meaning to Google. One such word for Google is the "site:" operator. To search a specific domain or site, use the "site:sampledomain.com" syntax in the Google search box.

For example, to find admission information on Stanford's site, enter:

If you would like to search for admission information on all educational domains, enter:

How do I stop my previous searches from appearing when I type in a new search term?

Fortunately (and unfortunately), this has nothing to do with Google. It's a feature of Internet Explorer 5.0, which is possible to disable using its menu. (You can verify this by going elsewhere on the web to fill out a form and then return to that same page on which you filled out the form.)

To disable this feature on Internet Explorer 5.0, go to the Tools menu; select Internet Options; select the Content tab. Within the Personal Information area, select AutoComplete. Click on Clear Forms. You can also uncheck the Forms box in this same window to keep this from occurring in the future.

Alternatively, you can delete individual entries from the history by using the Down arrow key to select a previous search, and then pressing Delete while an unwanted search is highlighted.

How can I set the default number of hits to 100?

Google's default (10 results) provides the fastest results. However if you know that you always want more than 10 results, you can visit our Preferences page and set the number of results to 20, 30, 50, or 100. You will get your chosen number of results for every search.

If you would just like to see more results on a per query basis, you can change the number of results when you search from our Advanced Search page.

How are query results listed?

Google's order of hits is determined by a combination of several factors, including PageRank priorities. Please check out our Why Use Google page for more detail, or take a look at Larry and Sergey's article The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine for pleasure reading.
International Questions

How can I get back to the Google homepage in English?

You can access the standard Google homepage by clicking on the "Google in English" link from any of our foreign language homepages. If this does not work, your browser is probably not configured to accept cookies.

If you want to change your Google interface language without changing your browser's accept-language preferences, you can set your Google language preferences manually on our "Language Options" page. However, setting language preferences this way does require that cookies be enabled; the accept-language behavior does not.

Why is Google displaying in another language when I didn't set any language preferences?

Google makes use of the Web's standard language-preferences mechanism, the HTTP accept-language header, to determine the display language. Browsers can have multiple accept-languages, arranged in order of user preference.

To view or modify accept-language in Internet Explorer 5, select "Internet Options" from the "Tools" menu. Click on the "Languages" button to view or modify your current language preferences.

In Netscape Navigator 4.7, select "Preferences" from the "Edit" menu. Expand the "Navigator" heading, and click on the "Languages" subheading to view or modify your current language preferences.

Please note: other websites with multi-lingual capability that support the accept-language header may also be affected by any modifications to your language preferences.

How can I improve the accuracy or number of results when searching for foreign words?

Google's technology is sensitive to the precise spelling of foreign words. Spelling the word correctly with the appropriate foreign characters will significantly improve the quality of your search results as well as the number of hits. For instructions on typing foreign characters with an English or any other keyboard, visit the following page for instructions: http://www.starr.net/is/type/kbh.html.

Why does Google not offer more language choices?

We continually add to our list of languages. Stay tuned!

How do I suggest a translation or spelling improvement?

Google aims to provide the most accurate translations on our international pages. However, due to the subjective nature of translation, you may encounter wording that does not seem right to you. Please contact us with specific words along with a possible alternative and we will consider your feedback when updating our user interface.

My question is not answered here. Where can I send my question?

Please visit our Contact Us page to find the appropriate place to send your question.