Google Web Search is a feature of Google that allows you to search for pages across the entire web. By default, it also will find matches from related Google search services, all mixed together as part of the “Everything” results that display.

Using Google Web Search is easy — just go to the Google home page and perform a search. However, you might find our guides below provide you some helpful information on how to get more out of your Google searching:

Search Engine Land’s Guide To Google
How To Use Google To Search
Meet The New Google Look & Its Colorful, Useful “Search Options” Column

Further below are recent articles from Search Engine Land related to Google Web Search:

Google Downplays Google+ With Updated Authorship Snippet?

Apr 25, 2013 at 9:37am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google has quietly changed the user interface for how they display the authorship snippet in the search results. The largest difference is that they removed the "more by" link that linked to additional stories written by that author. The other changes include that now clicking on the author's image and name will take you to a similar result set that you would have seen if you clicked on the old "more by" author link. I believe the author image and name use to take you to that author's Google+ page, when available. Now, the only way to get to the Google+ page of the author is to click o [...]

Google: We Removed Instant Previews Over Low Usage From Searchers

Apr 25, 2013 at 9:24am ET by Barry Schwartz

Yesterday we reported that Google changed how you access the cached, similar and share links within the search results by adding a new green down arrow next to the search snippet's URL. We asked, where did the Instant Previews go that launched on November 9, 2010 with a huge amount of excitement from Google. Google even said that the instant previews resulted in searchers being "5% more likely to be satisfied with the results they click." Well, that is now gone because searchers apparently did not use the feature. A Google spokesperson told us a blanket statement, "we’re constantly [...]

Semantic & Graph-Based Search: The Future Face Of Search

Apr 25, 2013 at 9:00am ET by Barbara Starr

In a June 2010 Semantic Web Meetup in San Diego, Peter Mika of Yahoo!'s research division gave a presentation entitled, "The future face of Search is Semantic for Facebook, Google and Yahoo!" As the title suggests, the presentation focused on the ever-growing use of semantic markup as a means for helping computers parse and understand content. The talk focused on what was then the current state of the Semantic Web, as well as upcoming formats/technologies in development and the research being done in the field of semantic search. The idea that the Semantic Web would be central to search [...]

Google Adds Green Arrows To View Cache, Similar Pages & To Share Results On Google+

Apr 24, 2013 at 3:06pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Google has updated how you access the cached pages, similar results and how you share search results on Google+. Now, when you want to see a cached version of a search result, you need to click on the green down arrow next to the URL in the search results. If you are logged in, you will likely see three options including cached, similar and share. If you are not logged in you will likely see cached and similar but not the share option. Note, the cached option may also not show up for sites. The picture above shows the new options in the Google search results interface. The old way [...]

Google Pulls Related Searches Filter Due To Lack Of Usage

Apr 23, 2013 at 3:32pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Google has quietly removed the "related searches" option from the search tools menu within the Google search results page. When Google launched search options in October 2009, the option for "related searches" appeared on the left-hand side under the "standard view." The placement of the "related searches" search option has changed over the years, including the whole search filters being moved to the top in November 2012; but, the ability to find related searches remained. That has ended last week, when Google decided to remove the feature. Google told us that they "weren't seeing enough [...]

Using the X-Default Hreflang Tag For Multinational SEO: Default Language Opportunities

Apr 18, 2013 at 2:00pm ET by Chris Liversidge

Google & Yandex announced the new x-default hreflang tag earlier this month, and in doing so closed the final gap in executing ‘perfect’ SEO platforms for multinational brands. There is, however, the question of what language content to use as your default, and how you can bring a little quantifiable information to play to determine your best, overall, choice.

Google Autocomplete: Your Personal Brand’s First Impression

Apr 18, 2013 at 9:44am ET by Brian Patterson

Pop Quiz: What is the first thing a searcher sees when they type your name into the Google search bar? If your answer was related webpages found in SERPs, you're wrong -- that would be the second thing. The first thing they see are the Autocomplete suggestions that drop down from the search bar. This is your true first impression! There are three basic facts of our Google-centric world: first, like it or not, we each represent the brand of our personal name; second, we are humans, and thus, we all make mistakes; and third, Google searches for individual names are tremendously popular [...]

Google Quick View Badge Field Trial

Apr 16, 2013 at 12:45pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Google announced a new Google field trial experiment for a feature they've been quietly testing named Quick View. The Google Quick View badge is found on a select number of sites when a searcher uses Google Mobile search from their smartphone. The feature is currently working for Wikipedia on searches done in English on Google.com. It basically will give you an almost instant view of the Wikipedia page when clicked on. Google says the Quick View will show you the Wikipedia page "immediately." Here is a picture: To see this yourself, you need to sign up for the field trial over [...]

Study: Top Reason A User Would Block A Site From A Search? Too Many Ads

Apr 15, 2013 at 1:42pm ET by Amy Gesenhues

An online survey examining SEO assumptions by SurveyMonkey found that the No. 1 reason users would block a website from their search results was if the website contained too many ads. If given an option to remove a website from future search results, 68 percent of the respondents said they would block a website because it had too many ads, while 60 percent claimed they would block a site because of poor quality content. Respondents were more forgiving of typos and grammar mistakes, with 26 percent claiming to block a website with typos and only 23 percent blocking a website containing bad g [...]

Study: Many Searchers Choose Google Over Bing Even When Google’s Name Is On Bing’s Results

Apr 15, 2013 at 1:24pm ET by Amy Gesenhues

In a recent study by SurveyMonkey examining SEO assumptions, respondents were given two search result pages, one with a page header labeled "Google" and the other with a page header labeled "Bing," and asked which page of results they preferred. Even when the page header labels were swapped, more users preferred the Google search results. Of 641 survey respondents, 379 participants received a survey asking which of two search result pages they preferred. One page of results for the term "file taxes" included true Google results and the other page included true Bing results. The Google page [...]

Google Beats Bing, Yandex & Blekko At Keeping Malware Out Of Search Results [Study]

Apr 11, 2013 at 4:29pm ET by Matt McGee

About three years ago, Google was labeled in one study as the "King of Malware." Things have apparently changed a lot since then. A new study reports that Google is beating its primary search competitors pretty significantly when it comes to keeping malware out of search results. The 18-month study (PDF), done by a German IT security group called AV-TEST, reviewed more than 40 million web pages -- the vast majority (about 38 million) coming from Google, Bing, Yandex and Blekko. The results: About .0025 percent of Google's search results were links to malicious websites. Blekko was [...]

Google Adds Non-Profit Details To Knowledge Graph

Apr 10, 2013 at 9:29am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google announced on Google+ that the Knowledge Graph now supports searches for non-profit organizations. Now, when you search for some non-profits by name on Google, Google will show on the right hand side, in the Knowledge graph box the nonprofit's financials, cause, assets, tax ID, tax code, recent Google+ posts and more. This seems to only currently work for non-profits with Google+ pages. So if you do the marketing for a non-profit, it may be wise to create a Google+ page for them. Here is an example of a search for [donors choose]: The information that is shown in the k [...]

Google Notifying Searchers In EU That They Use Cookies

Apr 8, 2013 at 12:15pm ET by Barry Schwartz

If you search for anything at Google UK or on any of the 27 localized versions of Google in the European Union, Google will now prompt you with a notification that they are using cookies to provide search results to you. In fact, Google says that by using Google search you are agreeing to allow Google to place cookies on your computer. Here is the prompt you will see when searching on Google UK: Clicking on the "learn more" link takes you to this page where Google explains what cookies are and how they may use them. Google also shares a video which you can watch that explains this, a [...]

Will Mobile Apps Be Google’s Undoing? (Hint: No)

Apr 4, 2013 at 11:19am ET by Greg Sterling

The New York Times offers an interesting story about Google and the competitive landscape of mobile. The headline is "As Web Search Goes Mobile, Competitors Chip at Google’s Lead." The central idea of the article is that while Google is used on the PC equally to discover information and to navigate to specific sites, on smartphones people go directly to apps such as Amazon, Kayak or Yelp. As a basic matter, that's accurate. However, quoting Danny Sullivan, the story also acknowledges that there's still a great deal of mobile search activity, which is dominated by Google. Indeed, accordin [...]

The Full March Madness Bracket Shows In Google Search Results

Mar 19, 2013 at 7:56pm ET by Matt McGee

I suspect that most college basketball fans will be following the NCAA College Basketball Tournament on TV and via their favorite bracket contest website, but they could follow it via a simple Google search, too, if they want. As Google's Dan Vanderkam shared this afternoon on Twitter, certain college hoops-related searches are now showing the entire NCAA tournament brackets. You can see it via searches like [march madness], [ncaa bracket] and even just [bracket]. By default, it shows eight games from round one this week ... err, "round two" by the NCAA's weird current system ... [...]

Google Penalized One Article On BBC’s Web Site

Mar 18, 2013 at 10:26am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google did end commenting on why the BBC received an unnatural link notification despite offering us a "no comment" on our story this past Friday. Was the BBC penalized for unnatural links? Was it possible that the world's largest news organization was not trusted by Google's algorithms? The answer is, only one article was penalized. John Mueller, a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google Switzerland, said in a Google Help thread: Looking into the details here, what happened was that we found unnatural links to an individual article, and took a granular action based on that. This is not nega [...]

Google Testing New ‘Search Within’ Tool; Also, Bigger URLs In Search Results

Mar 14, 2013 at 2:21pm ET by Matt McGee

Here are a couple current user interface changes that Google appears to be testing. Search Within The first one comes to us from Tecno-Net, and shows Google adding a "Search Within" command to its Google Instant interface. When you do certain searches -- like [CNN], [Apple] or [Google] -- one of the options that Google Instant shows is "Search Within," which allows you to limit your search to the specific website. If that doesn't quite make sense, Tecno-Net's video should make it more clear: Bigger Green URLS One other test involves larger text on the green-colored URL that Google s [...]

Study: 55 Percent Of Mobile-Search Driven Conversions Happen In One Hour Or Less

Mar 13, 2013 at 10:01am ET by Greg Sterling

Large numbers of people believe that the majority of mobile search activity happens “on the go.” However, according to an extensive new study from Google and Nielsen, the overwhelming majority (77 percent) of mobile search happens at home or work -- even when there’s a PC nearby and readily available. These people are choosing to search on their smartphones rather than PCs because of speed and convenience. And most of these users take some sort of near-immediate, follow-up action. In fact, the study found, 55 percent of mobile-search influenced conversions take place within one hour. [...]

“Better Than Google” Claims: Why Doesn’t Anyone Believe Them?

Mar 11, 2013 at 10:53am ET by Greg Sterling

Microsoft continues to run online its Pepsi-Challenge style ads "Bing It On," in which a majority of users prefer Bing in a "blind comparison test" with Google. Despite the commercials and despite Microsoft reporting that after extensive testing users preferred Bing 2:1, people generally express skepticism. People simply don't buy the campaign. Another recent study conducted by Butler University found that Q&A engine ChaCha bested Google in terms of the quality of answers provided (across nearly 4,000 queries). And last week, YP released the results of an extensive study of local sea [...]

Google Experimenting With Search-History “Topics” In Google Now Cards

Mar 11, 2013 at 10:11am ET by Greg Sterling

Google Operating System reports on a potentially new feature for Google Now (Android 4.1 and higher). None of us here could duplicate it. As described, it clusters users' search histories into topics that can easily be searched again (see image below "explore more"). I've noticed versions of this on my Android devices in the past. For example, I was looking for hotels in Montreal, Canada, and a Google Now card later encouraged me to search more for the same information. It's a "passive" way to get people to initiate more mobile search queries. Below is a topic image page (via GOS). Repor [...]

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