This is a trick with Unicode RTL. The search query in the URL contains the character U+202E RIGHT-TO-LEFT OVERRIDE, followed by the searched-for text in normal (nonreversed) order.<p>Apparently Google ignores this character when searching for matches (so the matches are displayed normally), but the character appears when the query is reproduced in the search box at top of the screen, so the search string appears backwards.
But did you guys know you can search a height of a celebrity?<p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=hieigh+of+obama#hl=en&sa=X&ei=MRfTTtP8B-fLsQLOuvTPDg&ved=0CD4QvwUoAQ&q=height+of+obama&spell=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=eace23dd34db2182&biw=999&bih=545" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#...</a><p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=hieigh+of+obama#pq=height+of+hillary+clinton&hl=en&cp=13&gs_id=1q&xhr=t&q=height+of+ashton+kutcher&tok=FTLzB4gxsRmjgy19D4upfw&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&source=hp&pbx=1&oq=height+of+ash&aq=0&aqi=g4&aql=&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=eace23dd34db2182&biw=999&bih=545" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#...</a><p>Try some other celebrity
Not only that, Google also does keyboard-layout mapping if you forgot to switch your keyboard layout before searching.<p>For example, if I want to search in Hebrew for "חיפוש בעברית" but accidentally typed in English and typed "jhpua gchcr," (same keys as the Hebrew chars) - I'll still get the results I was looking for [1].<p>[1] - <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=jhpua%20cgcrh" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=jhpua%20cgcrh</a>,
they might have just index that phrase backwards. if you were to search for "hacker news" backwards, you get nothing related. <a href="http://www.google.com/search?gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=swen+rekcah" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&i...</a>