# Google Results Pages URLs **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 11, 2003, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-results-pages-urls/212535 "2003-11-11T02:55:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gypsymoth3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/85e7bf/32.png) [@gypsymoth3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gypsymoth3)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-results-pages-urls/212535/1 "2003-11-11T02:55:32Z")
okay, i’ve been trying to “crack the code” of the google results page URL. so far, i’ve gotten this: * * * Results for lyrics [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=lyrics](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=lyrics) Results for Google [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=google](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=google) Results for Shinedown [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=shinedown](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=shinedown) Results for Memento [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=memento](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=memento) Results for “Three Days Grace” [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=“three+days+grace”](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22three+days+grace%22) Results for Closure+lyrics [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=closure%2Blyrics](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=closure%2Blyrics) Results for “chocolate chip cookie” [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=“chocolate+chip+cookies”](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22chocolate+chip+cookies%22) Results for blue yellow [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=blue+-yellow](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=blue+-yellow) * * * so, my first question is why do some searches use the format [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=query](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=query) while others use [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=query](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=query)? my second question may or may not be a little more complicated, or at least require a longer answer. in the URLs, the quotation mark is represented by %22 and the plus sign is represented by %2B. so, is there a list of “codes” to represent symbols like this on Google? and are they used anywhere else, or just on Google? i experimented some and found that 10 followed by any alphanumerical character turned up that character in the search, but i figured it’d be easier to take advantage of other people’s knowledge about this than to spen hours searching for different numbers along with the percent sign. ---
**Author:** ![black\_rabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f19dbf/32.png) [@black\_rabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/black_rabbit)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-results-pages-urls/212535/2 "2003-11-11T03:10:03Z")
I’ll leave part one for somebody else, but for part two, here’s more about URL encoding than you ever wanted to know: [http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/html/topics/urlencoding.htm](http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/html/topics/urlencoding.htm) ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-results-pages-urls/212535/3 "2003-11-11T04:08:52Z")
Regarding %22 = " and %2B = +, the 22 and 2B are hexadecimal representations of the ASCII code for those characters. [ASCII Character Map](http://sis.bris.ac.uk/~dw0857/ASCII-map.pdf) (Adobe format) The percent sign is the escape character that notifies the 'puter that the next two characters are hexadecinal values. The linked table shows four columns. The first is the decimal value of the character. The second is the image of the character (assuming a “standard” Latin typeface and without getting in to alternative character sets). The third column is the binary value of the character, and the fourth column is the hexadecimal representation. ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-results-pages-urls/212535/4 "2003-11-11T06:26:16Z")
This code may be tough to crack. When I searched for “lyrics” with Google, I got something rather different. Here’s your result, followed by my result: ```auto http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=lyrics http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=lyrics&btnG=Google+Search ``` The “btnG” is simple enough - “Google Search” is the name of the button I picked. I can’t explain why the encodings are different, though - “ISO 8859-1” vs “UTF-8”. But also, none of the searches I ran stuck that little “lr=” in. I don’t know what it could be. ---
**Author:** ![ForbiddenFruitsalad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ccd318/32.png) [@ForbiddenFruitsalad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ForbiddenFruitsalad)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-results-pages-urls/212535/5 "2003-11-11T11:11:55Z")
The “lr” parameter is used to restrict the language of pages. With “lr=lang\_de”, Google will only search German pages, for example. “lr=” probably gets added due to a preference setting that does not restrict the language. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-results-pages-urls/212535/6 "2003-11-11T20:09:47Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Achernar \* > **…I can’t explain why the encodings are different, though - “ISO 8859-1” vs “UTF-8”…** This is just a WAG but maybe that’s browser dependent. In IE (at least in 6.0) under Tools - Internet Options - Advanced tab, in the browser section there’s an option “Always send URLs as UTF-8”. Maybe it changes depending on whether or not that option is checked?