For adult Internet developers, it’s vitally important to keep an eye on Google. Although search options like Microsoft’s Bing.com are making some progress in gaining users, and Yahoo.com is still out there, Google nonetheless dominates the scene – and that isn’t likely to change in the near future.One of the reasons why Google dominates is that it always seems to be one step ahead of everyone else – and the company has an unwavering commitment to returning useful search results to its users first and foremost. That can be a pain in the rear to webmasters who are looking for Google traffic, since Google is always looking for ways to minimize the impact of cheap and easy SEO tricks. In other words, you have to actually work these days to build useful websites. But working with Google instead of resisting them is usually the best approach – after all, there’s nothing wrong with operating a useful and relevant website.
So with that in mind, let’s take a look at Google’s latest options for refining searches, because it’s not a bad idea to understand the various methods a user might use to end up on your website.
After launching its “Search Options” upgrade in May, Google announced this week brand new options for customizing Google search results. In addition to past options, users can now alter their search results based on variables such as what’s new in the index, a desire for more or less shopping sites, pages already visited or never visited, or sites that contain books, blogs or news.
Past hour or Specific date range. Searching for listings from the “Past hour” will return only results for extremely recent additions to the Google index, while setting a “Specific date range” will allow the user more control. This works well when you want only fresh results, or when you have a good idea about when the site or information you seek was published on the Web.
More shopping sites or Fewer shopping sites. Using these settings will help users get more useful results, depending on whether they’re shopping or just looking for useful product information. Google sees this option as potentially helpful to searchers who are looking for information about a product, such as third party reviews, but don’t want to wade through commercial sites – or vice versa.
Visited pages or Not yet visited. Removing pages that you’ve already visited can be helpful when you’re still looking for an answer and haven’t found the right site yet, while showing only pages you’ve visited can be useful for finding a site again that you previously found through Google. Using this option, however, will require users to be logged into their Google account with “Web History” enabled.
Books, Blogs or News. These settings give you some control over the source of the information you’re trying to track down, and join previous “Search Options” settings of Video, Forums and Reviews. Type in “government spending,” for example, and click the filter for “Blogs” and now you can find out how that infamous Internet blogger community is feeling on the issue.
