How-to Filter Google Results by Date

By Daniel Miessler on July 7th, 2008: Tagged as Google

As a part of my iPhone/VOIP project was just doing a Google search on the terms:

iphone voip asterisk

…and I tripped over an extremely cool Google feature that few know about: the ability to sort search results by date.

The problem with my search I did above is that I was looking for recent discussion on the topic of getting Asterisk to work with the iPhone, but there were tons of results going back one and even two years back — which is strange given the fact that the iPhone’s only been out for a year.

Anyway, I wanted recent stuff — like within the last month. That’s the timeframe of the iPhone SDK announcement, which precipitated several iPhone/VOIP-related announcements by developers.

The Solution

As it turns out, the answer is simple, if not a bit counter-intuitive. You simply add:

&as_qdr=w

…to whatever your query was (just add it to the end of the text in the URL bar after your regular search was completed).

Once you do this you end up with the following additional dialog:

google_date_query

And this allows you to tweak the range of dates you want to see results from. The results themselves also look different — each returning with a date for the story in front of it:

google_date_query_results

Tweaks

Something else that’s cool is that the text of the added string can be modified to yield more granular results. So, in the string &as_qdr=w, the “w” means 1 week. As you might guess, that’s mutable in the following ways:

  • n to get a specified number of time increments
  • d, w, y denote days, weeks, years respectively
  • they combine as n(t), so 3d is three days, 5w is five weeks, and 2y is two years

Enjoy!

(Note: A number of other sites have articles on this, including Tech Recipes, SEOBook, and TechCrunch. I started this before I knew of them and then used them as resources, so credit goes to them as well. )

  • Adrian Bool

    You can also ‘subscribe’ to Google’s beta search service. (I’m guessing it just dumps a cookie in your browser).

    This allows you to see the results on a graphical timeline, among other formats, should that be a useful representation.

    Check out, http://www.google.com/experimental/

  • Adrian Bool

    You can also ‘subscribe’ to Google’s beta search service. (I’m guessing it just dumps a cookie in your browser).

    This allows you to see the results on a graphical timeline, among other formats, should that be a useful representation.

    Check out, http://www.google.com/experimental/

  • Simon

    Or you could just use their advanced search form which puts that on the end for you.

  • Simon

    Or you could just use their advanced search form which puts that on the end for you.

  • http://www.expertsem.com/ Lorrin

    I read this on SEOMOZ a few months ago. I have been using it ever since.

  • http://www.expertsem.com Lorrin

    I read this on SEOMOZ a few months ago. I have been using it ever since.

  • Bren

    I passed your trick on to a friend, and he suggested adding it to the following: “If you create a toolbar bookmark with the following string as the URL you can have your searches work this way when you click on it. It will also automatically search on anything you have highlighted in the current page.”

    javascript:q=(document.getSelection)? document.getSelection(): document.selection.createRange();if(!q)q=prompt(‘Search:’,”); if(q)location= ‘http://www.google.com/search?q='+escape(q)+'&as_qdr=w';

  • Bren

    I passed your trick on to a friend, and he suggested adding it to the following: “If you create a toolbar bookmark with the following string as the URL you can have your searches work this way when you click on it. It will also automatically search on anything you have highlighted in the current page.”

    javascript:q=(document.getSelection)? document.getSelection(): document.selection.createRange();if(!q)q=prompt(‘Search:’,”); if(q)location= ‘http://www.google.com/search?q='+escape(q)+'&as_qdr=w';

  • Bren

    I passed your trick on to a friend, and he suggested adding it to the following: “If you create a toolbar bookmark with the following string as the URL you can have your searches work this way when you click on it. It will also automatically search on anything you have highlighted in the current page.”

    javascript:q=(document.getSelection)? document.getSelection(): document.selection.createRange();if(!q)q=prompt(‘Search:’,”); if(q)location= ‘http://www.google.com/search?q='+escape(q)+'&as_qdr=w';

  • http://ijalabs.blogspot.com/ Interloper

    Thanks! This is the most useful Google tip I’ve seen in a long time. I use it multiple times everyday.

  • http://ijalabs.blogspot.com/ Interloper

    Thanks! This is the most useful Google tip I’ve seen in a long time. I use it multiple times everyday.

  • http://ijalabs.blogspot.com/ Interloper

    Thanks! This is the most useful Google tip I’ve seen in a long time. I use it multiple times everyday.


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