Google offers a lesser-known advanced search command that can make your Google search easier.

Although the Google Tools menu can be used for the same thing, it takes six clicks to advanced search operators done with one click.

Advanced Search Operators

Advanced search operators (also known as search commands) are ways to improve your search to get a more accurate result.

For example, if you want search results from a specific site, you can use Web site: search operator.

Example of a site search operator:

apples site:example.com

The search above will return all web pages on example.com that contain the word “apple”.

Here’s how to do the same search, but this time we want to find results on “apple”, but not from example.com.

To do this, do the same search, but with a minus sign (-).

Example of a site exclusion search operator:

apple -site:example.com

Before: And then: Search Operators

The advanced search operators introduced by Google in 2019 are named before: in by: decrees.

These search commands make it easy to find web pages that are published over a period of time.

Such time-based searches help the user find websites that have been published over a period of time.

There was already a way to accomplish this time task using the advanced search tool available on the Google homepage.

But using these tools requires six clicks to perform a time-based search.

The old way to do this is to first click the Tools button located below and to the right of the search box:

Then the next step is to click the “Anytime” link.

The third step is to enter a custom time period in the calendar pop-up window.

It takes a lot of typing and clicking to find a document that was published within a certain time frame.

A new way to achieve time-based searches

The new way of searching is similar to the use of other advanced search operators, such as the above example of the site search operator: “site:”.

The search commands before and after look like this:

before:

after:

These are examples of using search commands before and after:

spider man before:2005
spider man after:2005
spider man after:2005-01-01 before:2019-31-12

Footnote: If you use full dates, the search should be done in year / month / day format.

What search operators mean before and after

Advanced search operator “before: 2019” means before 01.01.2019.

This is a screenshot of the search using the “before:” advanced search operator:

Notice how the above search result has a date of November 16, 2018? This is because Google returns websites before 01/01/2019.

This is the same search, but limited to pre-2018 results:

Similar to the previous search, which Google does with the search operator “before: 2018”, it returns websites that were published before January 1, 2018.

How dashes and slashes work

Something that’s really cool is that the dash (-) and slash (/) in the date also work.

So for this search:

avengers endgame after:2019/03/01 before:2019/03/05

You get this search result:

Time-based search operators are flexible with numbers

Another useful feature is that when entering a date, it does not matter whether one digit is written with a zero or without.

tole:

07

It works like this:

7

Are dates sometimes wrong?

The Date of publication search results pages will not always be displayed.

This was the case in 2019, when search commands were published before and after, and it has been the case since the publication of this article.

Sometimes there are also search results that don’t match.

For example, to search for Spider-Man like this:

spider man after:2005-01-01 before:2019-31-12

Search results should be available by 31 December 2019 at the latest.

But if you look at the example below, the result is from 2021. Is the search operator broken?

Wrong search result?

The above search result is not corrupted. The above search result appears to be from the 2021 IMDB website, but this page was originally published in 2019.

So, although the current website seems to state that it was published in 2021, the actual date of publication was the end of 2019 (as shown in cache stored by Archive.org) when IMDB created a website for a (then) unnamed film that eventually became known as Spider-Man No Way Home.

Before and after work on Google News

Date-based search operators also operate Google News.

This should make it easier to research news from certain periods.

for example WordPress has been updated to version 6.0 (named Arturo) at the end of May 2022.

If I search for WordPress Arturo from 2022 on Google News, Google News returns search results where the words WordPress and Arturo are on the news site. But nothing about the Arturo WordPress 6.0 update.

However, if I search for WordPress Arturo for dates after March 2022, I get search results for WordPress update news.

Google News searches as follows:

wordpress arturo after:2022-03-01

Returns the correct search results:

Dates before and after are considered estimates

At the time the search operators were announced, Google’s Danny Sullivan said it is possible that Google may not be doing the right thing because it is sometimes difficult to break down the actual date of publication.

Thus, it was said at the time that the dates of publication of search results used by date-based search operators should be understood more as an estimate.

But, as we can see, if we browse a little, some of what appear to be errors over time are actually correct. Only that the articles were subsequently updated.

Save time with search operators before and after

I have to admit that I forgot about search operators before and after. I have never seen anyone talk about them since the publication of these search operators.

However, searching with date restrictions is a useful way to search, so it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with these search operators.

Quote: Read on tweet SearchLiaison which was announced by the search operator before and after.

More sources:

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Selected image: Golden Dayz / Shutterstock