As a writer, you will inevitably need to do some research for a topic or article you are writing. Often, that research will need to be reasonably current, especially when it comes to topics like technology, finance, news, and legal issues.
Google offers some date search functionality in its “Advanced Search” menu, allowing users to limit searches to either the last month or the last year. However, that is very limited, and as it turns out, not very helpful. For most writing except for daily news writing, you will be looking for “recently updated information.” This encompasses more than just the last 30 days, but excludes information that is 10 or 12 months old.
The solution is a little website called d8search.com. If you sound it out like a license plate, you’ll see it is actually fairly easy to remember.
D8search is nothing more than a custom Google search, but it allows for a wider array of date parameters. My personal favorite for most searches is 3 months which seems to ensure that the search results returned could all be considered current without eliminating useful articles or posts.
As an added bonus, if something has changed regarding your topic during the last three months, that fact is likely to be revealed as you work through your first page of search results, whereas a longer search, like 12 months, might make that information harder to notice.
D8search is free and just displays regular Google search ads, so it’s a great writing research resource for all writers and freelancers.
P.S. It also makes a great way to find software, applications, and utilities by making sure that you are finding current versions, and that you aren’t steered to older apps that aren’t as good as the latest ones.
Related posts:
[...] days after I went through the trouble of pointing everyone to d8search as a way to get improved date searching out of Google search results, Google updated the features they offer in their own native [...]