Google Drops Sort By Date But Adds before: & after: Search Commands

Apr 10, 2019 - 8:48 am 3 by
Filed Under Google

Google Filter

Google announced yesterday a new feature they are "beta testing" to allow searchers to filter their web searches by dates (something they had for a while but dropped from mobile - it is on desktop). So they announced a new before: and after: search operator that lets you do this. Then quietly noted that they discontinued the sort by date feature in search.

Here is the announcement:

When I saw that tweet, I kept refreshing to see when Google would say they dropped the sort by date option. 13 tweets into the thread, Google posted about that feature being retired:

Here is what it looked like:

click for full size

I honestly thought Google added this search operator quickly (I can be wrong) because they dropped the tools to do it within the interface. Google keeps removing more and more search operators, I am surprised they took the time to add a new one?

But Danny's tweet made it sound like this was something Google has been working on for some time - so I guess I was wrong to assume that:

Google said they don't plan on removing the date picker from desktop search:

New before: and after: command

So how does this new before: and after: command work? Danny did an awesome job explaining it on Twitter. It works like any other search operator, like the site: command. You enter your query, then specify the before: and/or after: with the date syntax after the :.

Power user tricks:

Google then talks about how Google has issues sometimes picking up the right dates for stories, something they've discussed previously.

Yes, you can let Google know about issues:

Here is where to give feedback:

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

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