The homepage of Google.com contains two buttons just below the text box. The first one says Google Search and the other says “I’m Feeling Lucky“. This article explains what the second button does. There are some other things associated with the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button too. We’ll also discuss the average cost of that button to Google.

What does Google I’m Feeling Lucky button do

If Instant Search is turned on in your Google settings, you may not be able to use the “I’m feeling lucky” button because as soon as you start typing in the field, you are shown the results related to search suggestions, that start appearing as you type. To be able to use the button, you need to turn off Instant Search.

Most of us do not go to Google homepage any more to search, as the address bar itself serves as a search bar also. In modern browsers, the address bar is omni bar that allows you to type a URL or a search term. Based on what you type and the format of what you typed, the browser interprets what you are trying to do and acts accordingly.

If you type google.com and go to the Google homepage, you will see the standard text bar with two buttons below it: Google Search and I’m Feeling Lucky. The first button gives you a list of websites containing the keywords you typed into the search text box. The other button – “I’m Feeling Lucky” – takes you to the most possible matching website instead of taking you to a list of websites containing the keywords. This saves time if you get proper information related to the keywords you typed. But then, you must really be feeling lucky and confident to click that button.

In most cases, the search ends up at Wikipedia or Amazon. In other cases, it goes to homepage of things related to what you typed. For example, if you simply typed AA and clicked on “I’m feeling lucky”, you will be taken to the American Airlines homepage.

There are certain other things that the button can do for you. We’ll come to it in a while. As said earlier, you need to turn off Instant Search from Google Search Settings.

How to turn off Instant Search Settings in Google

On the home page of Google, you will see the Settings label – towards the bottom right corner of the browser. Click on Search Settings and check out the second option in the page that appears. It asks you when it should be showing you the instant results.

There are three options:

When my computer is fast Always Never.

You have to click on “Never” to turn off Instant Search. Then you scroll down and click Save.

You can get back the Instant Search using the same steps. Just click on Settings on the home page of Google.com and click to select “When My Computer is fast”. Scroll down and click on Save.

More about Google I’m Feeling Lucky button

1] If you click the I’m Feeling Lucky button without entering anything into the text box, you will be taken to Google Doodles Archives. You can browse through the Google Doodles available. It also shows Doodles being displayed at that time in any country. You can view Google Doodles displayed in previous years on that day. Then there is the gallery to browse all Doodles.

2] At Google.com, you can get many more options such as “I am feeling Trendy”, “I am feeling Stellar”, “I am feeling Generous” etc. These options are not available in the regional versions of Google homepage. To stick to google.com, type google.com/ncr without the quotes in the address bar of your browser. NCR is short for “No country recognition”. On this homepage, when you hover your mouse cursor on the “I’m feeling lucky” button, the button starts rolling like the slot machines does and stops with one of the many options as mentioned above. Clicking on the button will take you to related websites. For example, if you did not enter anything in the text box, and the button says “I’m feeling stellar”, you will be taken to Google Earth. Likewise, “I’m feeling artistic” will take you to Google Cultural page where you can explore art.

When you move the mouse pointer away from the button, it comes back to “I’m Feeling Lucky”. You can again hover your mouse pointer on the button to get some other option for further exploration.

Cost of Feeling Lucky

Google makes money by showing ads and promoted search results when people search using its search engine. Under such case, taking you directly to a website when you click “I’m feeling lucky” costs it a fortune, because some 1% of people searching for things, click on the button. That results in ad revenue loss for Google.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin once mentioned that only around 1% of all Google searches go through the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. Because this button takes users directly to the top search result, Google doesn’t get to show search ads.

It is estimated that the loss could be around $110 million per year. You might wonder why a money making institution like Google would want to lose that much money per year for the sake of a button!

According to Marrisa Meyer of Google, it sends out a signal that there are real people on the other side of the search engine. It will become too dry if Google Search sticks just to the search and ads plus promoted search results. The presence of “I’m feeling lucky” button adds a human personality to the search engine.

If you liked this post, you might like Google Search Fun Tricks too.