Why does “Turn! Turn! Turn!” equal 241217.524881?

Re:Why does “Turn! Turn! Turn!” equal 241217.524881? by crazygringo on Friday July 30, 2021 @11:09AM (#28008831)

First -- I think the person you quoted is just wrong, it's not a feature at all.

Google "cm! 5 inches" or "cm 5 inches", or even "5 inches to cm" or "5 inches cm" and you get exactly the same result in all cases. The exclamation point isn't a feature, it's irrelevant.

But to answer your question more broadly: basic search syntax is documented here [1]. But then everything else -- like calculator or conversion functionality or snippets -- just falls under the broader umbrella of Google trying to give you answers directly whenever possible, rather than just links. And that isn't documented, first, because it's changing/improving constantly, and second, there's just too many custom features like that for any consumer to ever keep track of, so what would even be the point?

[1] https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en

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Re:Why does “Turn! Turn! Turn!” equal 241217.524881? by codesections on Friday July 30, 2021 @12:09PM (#28009479)

> Google "cm! 5 inches" or "cm 5 inches", or even "5 inches to cm" or "5 inches cm" and you get exactly the same result in all cases. The exclamation point isn't a feature, it's irrelevant.

That appears to be correct, and I added a comment to the quoted answer to that effect. Thanks!

On the broader point, you are also correct – and, in particular, the calculator/unit syntax is documented at https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/3284611

I was mistaken; Google provides better documentation of their search than I thought. I appreciate the correction.

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Re:Why does “Turn! Turn! Turn!” equal 241217.524881? by D-Coder on Friday July 30, 2021 @03:14PM (#28011286)

If you have to do a search to find documentation on searching... :-(

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Re:Why does “Turn! Turn! Turn!” equal 241217.524881? by addingnumbers on Friday July 30, 2021 @11:46AM (#28009235)

> that isn't documented, first, because it's changing/improving constantly, and second, there's just too many custom features like that for any consumer to ever keep track of, so what would even be the point?

Same point as any documentation, to make information about features and changes available to the people who DO want it.

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