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Search Google for specific number of years, months, weeks, days, minutes, seconds or date range

Do you want to search a word or expression in Google Search and want the search results be confined only from web pages for a specific period or for a specific time range? For example, you may want to see Google search results from web pages of last 2 years, or of last 5 months, or of last 3 weeks, or of last 6 days, or of last 15 hours, or of last 23 minutes, or of last 8 seconds. Or alternatively, you may be interested to find Google search results only from web pages published during a specific date range such as from September 5, 2005 to March 28, 2007. Well, Google makes it possible. Some of these options are now specifically shown in the left-sidebar in the search results page which is displayed when you click Show options on that page. However, many of these options are not shown and you’ve to try some tricks to get search results for these specific periods, which I am going to explain in this article.

For the purposes of this article, let’s search some keyword which has sufficient number of search results even from pages published during last few seconds. I have selected “password” keyword. Just search password on Google Search, and you’ll get about a huge number of search results. I got 769 million results (769,000,000)! This is not what we want. OK, let us refine this search for different time periods. Let me clarify at the outset itself that now, Google Search gives you options to confine your search results from web pages of certain specific periods. For that purpose, click Shown options in the title-bar just below the search-box (see image below):

You’ll notice a side-bar appearing on the left side of screen with the following contents:

This side-bar gives you the options to select the results from the following time-ranges:

• Any time
• Recent results
• Past 24 hours
• Past week
• Past year
• Specific date range (where you can select any beginning date and the ending date, from which to select the search results).

While these options are very powerful tools to get the search results from a particular time period, my purpose of writing this article is to show even more control on time-range and to give full flexibility to you to find search results for any time period, say for last 5 days, or for last 17 seconds, or for last 14 minutes, and so on. OK, I’ll explain some simple tricks that you can use to get the search results for such specific time periods as per your choice.

Before we start learning these tricks, let me state that we shall be using password as our keyword for searching Google Search. Moreover, we shall be using the simple and plain-vanilla search expression (after removing the extra-variables in the search string for browser name, language name, etc.). So, our starting simple search expression for searching password will be as under:

http://www.google.com/search?q=password

It will search web pages for all time periods, i.e., for any time. This basic string will be shown in red color in the following paragraphs. This is our basic search expression and we shall be adding various expressions to its end for different time periods (with green color to distinguish from the red color of this expression). If you want to construct some other keyword, simple replace password by your own keyword; or otherwise, simply search your expression in Google search box and then add the following extra expression at the end for your desired time period / range.

Now, let us start exploring tricks for confining these search results for various specific time periods.

(1) Get search results for a specific number of years:

Suppose you want to search from the web pages of last 5 years, you’ve to add the following term to the above search expression:

&tbs=qdr:y5

So, our full search expression will now become

http://www.google.com/search?q=password&tbs=qdr:y5

This will search web pages of last 5 years. You can check it. Just see in the following image, when you search with this search expression, how the Google search pages’ title bar below the search-box shows past 5 years to indicate the time period of search:

Similarly, if you want to search, say, for last 3 years, simply replace y5 with y3. Make similar change for any other number of years. Looks simple? OK, let’s move ahead.

(2) Get search results for a specific number of months:

If you want to search from the web pages of last 4 months, you’ve to add the following term to the above search expression:

&tbs=qdr:m4

So, our full search expression will now become

http://www.google.com/search?q=password&tbs=qdr:m4

This will search web pages of last 4 months. See the following image; when you search with this search expression, the Google search pages’ title bar below the search-box shows past 4 months to indicate the period of search:

If you want to search, say, for last 7 months, simply replace m4 with m7. Similarly, for any other number of months.

Now that we have understood the basic trick, we’ll move fast.

(3) Get search results for a specific number of weeks:

For searching web pages of last 3 weeks, you’ve to add the following term to the above search expression:

&tbs=qdr:w3

So, our full search expression will now become

http://www.google.com/search?q=password&tbs=qdr:w3

This will search web pages of last 3 months.

(4) Get search results for a specific number of days:

For searching web pages of last 9 days, you’ve to add the following term to the above search expression:

&tbs=qdr:d9

So, our full search expression will now become

http://www.google.com/search?q=password&tbs=qdr:d9

This will search web pages of last 9 days.

(5) Get search results for a specific number of hours:

For searching web pages of last 7 hours, you’ve to add the following term to the above search expression:

&tbs=qdr:h7

So, our full search expression will now become

http://www.google.com/search?q=password&tbs=qdr:h7

This will search web pages of last 7 hours.

(6) Get search results for a specific number of minutes:

For searching web pages of last 6 minutes, you’ve to add the following term to the above search expression:

&tbs=qdr:n6

So, our full search expression will now become

http://www.google.com/search?q=password&tbs=qdr:n6

This will search web pages of last 6 minutes. Similarly, for example, for searching results for pages published in last 23 minutes, use n23 instead of n6 in the above search expression.

(7) Get search results for a specific number of seconds:

Wow! Now, we are entering into the realm of real-time search! Google allows you to search from the web pages which have been published in last specific number of seconds only!!

For example, for searching web pages published during last 37 seconds, you’ve to add the following term to the above search expression:

&tbs=qdr:s37

So, our full search expression will now become

http://www.google.com/search?q=password&tbs=qdr:s37

This will search web pages of last 37 seconds. Just have a look at the following image which now displays the expression past 37 seconds in the title-bar under the search-box in Google search results. Moreover, you’ll notice that even from the web pages published during last 37 seconds, there are two search results for keyword password. The image shown below is an abridged and modified image to adjust it in the left-column of this page; you can click on this image to see the full-size image:

Let me clarify that the term real-time search used by me above basically means the time when a web page is included in the Google search results and it may not exactly be the time when it is actually published. However, in most cases, Google includes web pages within a few seconds of their getting published, therefore, the search results will be more or less in real-time.

(8) Get search results for a specific date range:

For searching for web pages for a date range, say from September 25, 2004 to February, 15, 2006, add the following term to the above search expression:

&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:9/25/2004,cd_max:2/15/2006

So, our full search expression will now become:

http://www.google.com/search?q=password&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:9/25/2004,cd_max:2/15/2006

This will search web pages that were published during the said date range. Similarly, you can search any other date range.

I may point out that as mentioned in the beginning of this article, the web pages for a specific date range can also be searched by using the Specific date range option in the left side-bar of search results which is activated by clicking Show options; you have to just enter the date range in the text-boxes provided for that purpose; see the following image:

Conclusion:

Thus, you can easily notice that Google Search gives you several options to search the web from any specific time period. These simple tricks can be of great use that way. If you are seeing the same search results in Google most of the times, try changing the time period for search, you may get a different set of results. You may also see the recent results in this manner with a high degree of flexibility.

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