Custom Search Tools

Narrow down your search with these effective online tools.
Scholar: Google Scholar provides a great way to search through the full text of scholarly literature from all fields and formats. The index of materials gives easy search capabilities to nearly all peer-reviewed journals that appear online and has a "cited by" feature that can make is easier to find related materials and gather sources.
Patent Search: This specialized search tool from Google allows users to search through millions of patents from 1979 to the present to see if a particular design or idea has already been claimed. Each patent results page will come complete with citations, drawings and claims from the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Sets: More of a fun tool than a search engine, Google Sets allows you to enter a few items of a set into a search query and the site will try to predict other items in the set. While it’s right on a majority of the time, some results will undoubtedly produce a chuckle.
Catalogs: Tired of those old catalogs piling up or filling your mailbox? Unsubscribe to them and browse through catalogs with Google instead, which has collected over 6,600 print catalogs.
Search by Number: Did you know you can enter an area code, parcel tracking number or flight information into Google and get the information you need quickly and easily? Simply type in what you’re searching for and Google will do the rest.
Accessible Search: This search engine is designed especially to aid those who are visually impaired or blind by giving priority to sites that have been designed for usability by everyone.
Trends: Get easy to read graphs of Web trends over time with this tool. It allows users to track searches over city, region or country to see when certain topics were of more interest to browsers. Users can also take a look at Hot Trends which displays the most popular searches over the past hour.
Book Search: Formerly known as Google Print, this tool allows users to search through the full text of books that are scanned and stored in the Google database. Results range from entire books to short excerpts depending on arrangements with publishers and copyright issues with the materials.
News Archive Search: Browse articles that go back over 200 years with this integrated feature of Google News. Users can find articles from sources like the New York Times, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal and more.
Special Searches: Google offers a wide variety of special search tools that can help narrow down what you’re looking for. Choose from searches that specialize in universities, the government, public service, Linux, Microsoft, Apple and more.