As big as the Internet is, Google search index is equally impressive in size and age of information available in it's index. But when you are searching for specific information that needs to be current, you don't want to see results that are old as the Internet.
Google does a good job of providing the most relevant information, but sometimes the information can be stale. To make sure the results of the search are recent, you can use Google's advanced search and specify to have the results returned by past week, month, or year.
The easiest way to specify a range of time is to open Google's search page and click on the Advanced Search link.
Then scroll down to the Date, usage rights, numeric range, and more section and click on the plus sign to expand the section.
Here, you can specify (click on drop down arrow) how current you want the search results to be returned by anytime, past 24 hours, past week, past month, past year.
Once you have made your selection, scroll up the Advanced Search page and enter your search word or phrase then click on the Advanced Search button (bottom).
Notice that your search results will be returned with the date next to each result within the time that was specified (in my example, that was the past 24 hours). Also, notice a new drop down box has appeared next to the search field that allows you to modify the time range with out needing to access the Advanced Search page again (shown above).
The addition of the drop down box will continue to be available during that session, until you close the page or browser.
If you want to further controll the date range than what the Advanvced Search page offers, you can append a command to the end of the URL after executing a search. To do this:
- Go to Google and enter your search word or phrase.
- Then in the address field of your browser, append the following command to the end of the URL: &as_qdr=d
To specify the date range, just add the numbers of days at the end of the command. So to search for 3 days, use:
&as_qdr=d3
and press enter. The results will be shown with the range that you specified.
To search for the last 2 weeks replace d with w
&as_qdr=w2
The same can be done with month (m2) or year (y3).
Unfortunately you can't search for hour at this time. But you can probably bet that Google will add this feature to their home (search) page in the future so it's always available, and you won't need to add extra clicks by using the Advanced Search page or special commands.
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