You might think the answer is in millions but according to Google/Yahoo/MSN, there are Zero documents containing symbol @.Search engines claim to index billions of webpages, yet none of them can find a single result for queries like ! [exclamation mark], @ [at symbol], # [hash], *, ~ and even square brackets.
Can anyone think of a possible reason why we get ZERO search results for the @ symbol when lot of websites write @ sign to separate the email username and webdomain name [like x @ yz.com] to prevent spam robots from harvesting email addresses.
Google could atleast point to Wikipedia or even Wiktionary which have a full article on the @ sign.
Related Google Easter Egg: Try typing ! in the Google search box and click "I'm feeling lucky" - When there no results for some query, Google will try to educate you about the use of this button.
The "I'm Feeling LuckyTM" button automatically takes you to the first web page returned for your query. An "I'm Feeling Lucky" search means less time searching for web pages and more time looking at them.
Update: According to Google, they ignore all punctuation marks or special characters such as exclamation points, question marks, or the @ sign as these types of characters are so common that including them in a search would greatly slow the delivery of the search results.
So you are out of luck if your research involves finding documents with any of the following special characters. Atleast the search engines aren't going to help you. Try search for "C #" or "#1" and they will simply ignore the # symbol.
apostrophe ( ' ) ( ' ), brackets ( ( ) ) ( [ ] ) ( { } ) ( ? ? ), colon ( : ), comma ( , ), dashes ( - ) ( - ) ( - ) , ( -- ), ellipsis ( … ) ( ... ), exclamation mark ( ! ), full stop/period ( . ), hyphen ( - ) ( - ), interrobang ( ? ), question mark ( ? ), quotation marks ( ' ' ) ( " " ), semicolon ( ; ), slash/solidus ( / ), space ( ), interpunct ( · ), ampersand ( & ), asterisk ( * ) and asterism ( ? ), at ( @ ), backslash ( \ ), number sign ( # ), prime ( ? ), tilde ( ~ ), underscore ( _ ), vertical bar/pipe ( | )
