In our ‘Google the innovator‘ series earlier this year, we showcased the new search options that Google was in the process of rolling out. This included a side panel that lets you filter your search results to those from specific types of websites (such as reviews sites), or even results added in a specific time frame.

You can reach this side panel by clicking ’show options’ just above the search results.

This is what it looks like:

Google have now added many more ways for you to refine your search results. These include:

• past hour

• specific date range

• more / fewer shopping sites

• visited / not visited pages

• blogs

• news

The past hour and specific date ranges can be very useful to find the latest information posted on a particular subject. This is all part of the search engines’ battle to deliver the best ‘real time’ results.

The shopping sites option lets you show additional pages from shopping sites, and display prices from those pages on the actual search results. This is going to save lots of time when hunting for a bargain online. Alternatively, if you’re just researching a topic and aren’t in the buying frame of mind, you can exclude shopping sites from the results.

The visited pages option usefully allows you to identify sites you’ve been on before, which you may be trying to find again. To use this option you need to be signed in to your Google Account and also have ‘Web History’ enabled.

Have a go with the new options and let us know what you find!