What is the name of Google's academic search engine?

Google's academic search engine is called Google Scholar.

Google Scholar searches scholarly literature rather than ordinary web pages. Its index can include journal articles, books, conference papers, theses, dissertations, preprints, abstracts, technical reports, court opinions, and patents. Depending on copyright and availability, a result may link directly to a full text, a library copy, or only bibliographic information.

The service was released in beta in November 2004. It is useful for finding academic papers and tracing how research is cited, but it is not a perfect substitute for a university library database. Coverage varies by publisher and discipline, and some results may be duplicated or lack rigorous peer-review filtering.

Google Scholar is distinct from Google Books, which focuses on books and scanned publications; Google Patents, which focuses on patent documents; and Google News, which searches journalism. Researchers commonly use Scholar's citation links, related-article suggestions, and “Cited by” counts to follow a topic's research trail.