The Google Search Engine is now testing a new “before:” and “after:” command to filter right from the search box. The new commands allow users to restrict searches to specific dates.
Google’s Danny Sullivan today announced new search commands, the before: and after: commands.
According to Danny, the commands are:
“The before: & after: commands return documents before & after a date. You must provide year-month-day dates or only a year. You can combine both. For example:[avengers endgame before:2019]
[avengers endgame after:2019-04-01]
[avengers endgame after:2019-03-01 before:2019-03-05]”
The old way of searching was by using the date search tool:
Google.com has long allowed users to filter search results by time from general increments to setting a “custom date range.” On all platforms, Search users can filter results by past hour, 24 hours, week, month, and year. A “Custom date range” option is available on the desktop web to set the exact “from” and “to” range.
The new way of serarching using Before/After Search Command:
Two new commands allow you to filter right from the search box, and can be used in conjunction together.
Danny Sullivan provided power user tips:
“Power user note! If you provide only a year, before: & after: translates those into full dates that work, such as follows:[before:2018] =
[before:2018-01-01][after:2018] =
[after:2018-12-31]”Danny also indicated that you can use dashes or slashes in the dates and that single digits were ok to use ( 5 instead of 05). Here is what he tweeted:
“2018-12-31
2018/12/31You can also use a single digit for month or day, so all of these are valid:2019-3-1
2019-3-12
2019-03-01”
Meanwhile, Google wants to remove the date display that appears next to the 10 blue links when using these tools today as it is hard to determine when a site on the web was published or updated. This is due to the lack of a standard, while some sites provide no dates at all.
