I do love me Google. A lot. I use it exclusively, and whenever I present to the hoi polloi on "Searching teh Intarwebs" I use Google to do it. But there is one thing they need to fix, between adding more one boxes and putting little arrows at the end of my customized search results. They need a decent timeline selector.
Often, and more often lately, when I search for something, I want to know what Google has found for this in the last day, or two days, or week, or not this week, but last week, but not as long ago as last month. And there is no easy way to do this.
Sure, there's the Advanced Search, with its limited selection of dates. Or I can use the News filter, or the Blogs filter, but none of that would be as easy to use, or as accurate, as a handy slider. Google has many examples in their own products of temporal selectors, from the stocks charts in Finance to the calendar pickers in Analytics. It is time to bring one of those to the mothership, Big G.
And then, not four days later (that would be today), at their Searchology event, Google introduces "Search Options" in their basic search interface, which includes, tada! some basic temporal controls.
Read more.
And how funky is that Wonder Wheel?