…a serious contender for coolest Google product feature: GoogleLookup. GoogleLookup is a Google Spreadsheets function that attempts to return the value of any attribute for any entity that you specify. Here’s the syntax: =GoogleLookup(”entity”; “attribute”).
So what makes GoogleLookup really cool is that it references data not just from your spreadsheet (as with functions like =SUM(A2:A20)), but searches that incredibly expansive body of published information: the world wide web. By performing a targeted websearch, GoogleLookup attempts to return some fact about the entity you specify. City populations are a nice example. Entering =GoogleLookup(”Philadelphia”; “population”) in any spreadsheet cell…returns the value 1,449,634, which is in fact accurate. This may sound like magic, but go ahead and try it in a spreadsheet of your own.
