Google’s Halloween Easter Eggs

by | Oct 31, 2013 | Blog

 HalloweenHappy Halloween!

 

Historically, Google has a sense of humor in the way that they run business.  Public holidays are generally highlighted on Google’s homepage with special images and “Google Doodles” to represent popular events or historical figures.  Halloween this year is no different- but how do Easter Eggs relate to this spooky holiday?

The search giant has inserted a variety of Halloween “Easter eggs” into their search algorithm, which produce articles on anything from what skeletons prefer to eat and how to defeat the Grim Reaper.  When spooky terms such as “ghost” or “witch” are searched, special Halloween-themed hidden message eggs populate the page adjacent to traditional Google search results.  This has been made possible due to the recent Hummingbird update which boosts the prominence and effectiveness of Google’s Knowledge Graph.

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The Knowledge Graph is a database that includes over 500 million concepts and relationships.  This allows Google to anticipate supplemental facts or data that the user may find useful in addition to their original search term.  This search evolution is part of Google’s Hummingbird update, which improved the core search for answering longer, more complex and spoken queries.

Although the precise number of Halloween Easter eggs is unknown, there are at least 10 that have been recorded.  So, after you’re finished reading this blog, go see what eerie eggs you can discover!

 

Do you know what a witch’s favorite food is?  Try searching these terms in Google to find out-

  1. Witch
  2. Grim Reaper
  3. Ghost
  4. ???