Google has many interesting ways that it handles numbers. We’ve already discussed how it treats specialized numbers in our article, Specialized Number Search.
And, we’ve discussed how you can turn Google into a calculator in the article, The Amazing Google Calculator – Hidden in Plain Sight. Now, we’re going to talk about how you can search Google using a range of numbers.
Essentially, you can tell Google that you want it to search for a range of numbers within the text, or wherever else you want with the advanced operators. It will find numbers equal to, or within the range, and understands numbers it finds on pages that have commas and decimal points in them. To tell Google to do a number range search, place two periods between to numbers, with no spaces, like this:
low_number..high_number
Let’s say you were trying to figure out who was president between 1800 and 1804. You could perform the following search:
You can search with decimal points in the lower or higher number, but it gets confused with commas. For example:
[15,000..30,000 miles] confuses it.
but [3.1..3.9 liters] does not.
You can also leave off one of the numbers to do a equal or greater than or less than or equal. For example, the following will search for numbers greater than or equal to 50000000 miles.
You are supposed to be able to search dollar amounts, but it did not work for me, as it also pulled up numbers within the range that were not dollar amounts..
Mark Fleming is the founder of a new blog called Google Tutor & Advisor. Google Tutor & Advisor offers in-depth Tips, Techniques and Advice for Google Users.
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