Search help
What you can type into the AskRobots search box. Click any example to try it.
Quick answers
Some searches get a short answer above the results. The results are still there below it.
- sqrt(144)square root of 81sin(pi/2)
- Square roots and functions: sqrt, sin, cos, tan, log, ln, abs, round, floor, ceil, exp, and pi and e. Angles are in radians.
- what is 18 * 712 times 1210 mod 3
- Ask in words: “what is”, plus, minus, times, divided by, mod.
- = 24/7calculate 9-11
- Start with = or “calculate” to get a sum for something that looks like a date, a score or a phone number. Without it, 24/7 and 9-11 are searched as words.
- 1Z999AA10123456784EA123456785USTBA123456789012
- A tracking number: which carrier it is, and a link to the carrier’s own tracking page. UPS, USPS, international post and Amazon numbers work on their own. We only link; we never look up your package.
- fedex 123456789012dhl 1234567891
- FedEx and DHL numbers are plain digits, so add the carrier’s name.
- weather houstonweather 77002forecast austin tx
- Weather: the forecast from the National Weather Service, for a US city, town or ZIP code.
- houston weather tomorrowwill it rain tomorrow houston
- Add today, tonight, tomorrow or weekend, or ask if it will rain.
- weather
- Just “weather” asks which place. We never guess it from your address; you can choose to remember a place.
- define serendipityserendipity meaningwhat does ubiquitous mean
- Dictionary: the meaning of a word, with its pronunciation and part of speech, from Wiktionary (more meanings a tap away). Misspelled words are fixed, and we say what you typed.
- plumber houstontacos montrosedentist katy
- Houston businesses: a few nearby places for a kind of business and a Houston area, the business’s own website first.
Going to a site
Type a site’s name or address and its own home page comes first, even a site we know only from links to it.
- ebayebay.comwww.ebay.com
- A site’s name or address: its home page first.
- Not visited yet
- A page we haven’t read yet: we know it from the sites that link to it. Showing it in a search asks our crawler to read it.
Search operators
Add these to your words. They work alone or together, and each one shows as a chip you can remove.
- "climate change"python "list comprehension"
- Exact phrase: put words in quotes to find them together, in this order. The whole search or a part of it, and as many phrases as you like. A quoted word is kept as typed: no spelling fix, and it is never the word left out when few pages have them all.
- jaguar -carjaguar -"big cat"
- Leave a word out with a minus sign, or a phrase with a minus before the quotes.
- tea OR coffeebest tea OR coffee shops
- Either word: OR in capitals between them. A lower-case “or” is an ordinary word.
- mars site:nasa.govtutorial site:docs.python.org
- One site, and its subdomains. Add a path for one part of a site.
- intitle:tutorial pythonintitle:"getting started" rust
- Words in the page title. Quote two or more words.
- inurl:docs python
- A word in the page’s address.
- tax forms filetype:pdf
- A file type, matched by the address ending: pdf, doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, txt, csv, xml, rss, epub and more. We index the text of pages, so not every file is found.
- election after:2024python release before:2025-06
- Dated after or before: a year, a month or a day. The page’s own publish date when it gives one, else when we first indexed it.
- mechanical keyboards type:forumchili type:recipe
- One kind of page: forum, qa, discussion, docs, wiki, news, blog, recipe, product, paper, faq, event, course, howto, review, book, software, video.
- link:python.org
- Pages that link to a site or a page, from our own crawl. Add words to filter them.
- related:python.org
- Sites like this one: linked from the same pages, or in the same directory topic.
Options on the results page
Links above the results. They change this search only.
- python release, sorted by date
- Newest first among the best matches.
- python release, past week
- Past day, week, month or year.
- election, News
- News: pages their sites mark as news articles, newest first. Latest news
- definately, Verbatim
- Verbatim: your words exactly as typed. No spelling fixes, no partial matches.
- Advanced search
- All of the above as a form.
Spelling
We fix obvious typos, and you can always search for exactly what you typed.
- definately
- A search that finds almost nothing because of a typo shows results for the fixed spelling, with a link to search instead for what you typed. Otherwise you may see “Did you mean”.
- "definately"
- Spelling is never fixed with Verbatim, with quotes, or with an operator such as site:.
On the results page
- Each result
- What the site is about, who links to it and, when we have one, a quality score. Click the topic to browse similar sites.
- About this page
- “About this page” shows everything we know about a result. On a computer, point at a result and the panel on the right shows it.
- github.comtechnology
- A search that names a site or a topic we know gets a short card in that panel.
- More ⋯
- The ⋯ menu of a result: Save it to your AskRobots links, read our cached text copy, or report a result that is spam, harmful, illegal or wrong.
- Screenshots
- Small pictures of the pages, so you can see a page before you click.
- AI summary
- Some searches get a short summary in the panel, written by AI running on our own computer from the top results, with numbered links to its sources. AI can make mistakes: check them.
- Try it elsewhere
- At the bottom of the page, links send the same search to other search engines.
- Browse topics
- Sites by topic, from our directory.
- How results work
- How the results are chosen and ranked.
Settings
Saved in a cookie in your browser. No account needed.
- Settings
- Safe search (on unless you turn it off), results per page, your language, opening results in a new tab, light or dark theme.
- Weather place
- A place you chose to remember, so plain “weather” answers for it.
- Keyboard ?
- Keyboard shortcuts on the results page: / for the search box, j and k for the next and previous result, Enter or o to open it, Esc to leave the box, ? for the list. They can be turned off in Settings.
- Make it your default
- Use AskRobots from your browser’s address bar.
For developers
- API
- Search the web from your code and AI agents: $25 a month with 500 searches, and a few free a day without a key.
Something missing?
If a search doesn't do what this page says, or you'd like it to do something new, email us. More about us: About AskRobots.