Google makes it easier to search for what’s really, really new

Google announced several refinements to its “search options” feature today, which give users more control over the kinds of the results they see in Google.

The most interesting addition, especially for folks interested in the potential of real-time search, is the ability to look at search results from the last hour, or from the date range of your choice. Google already included the ability to narrow results to the past day, week, or year in its initial set of search options, but the “past hour” feature is a real step up in timeliness. This is still distinct from real-time search, though, since the results come from Google’s standard web crawling, rather than instantaneous tracking of conversations on sites like Facebook and Twitter, as Search Product Manager Nundu Janakiram tells The New York Times.

Another new feature lets users control how many shopping sites they see in their search results. If you’re actually looking to buy something, seeing a bunch of shopping-related links can be useful, otherwise they can be annoying. This could also be helpful for Google’s advertising, since you’re providing more information about your intent as you search, and targeting ads to users who explicitly acknowledge that they’re ready to make a purchase could be more lucrative.

The final addition allows you to see only pages you haven’t visited yet, or on the flip side, only pages you have visited. The former is useful when you’re trying to do research and don’t want to waste time reading sites you’ve already seen, but the latter is nice when you’re trying to track down a site that you found in your search results a couple of days ago.

Some of these changes may remind you of Bing, since Microsoft also touts its search engine’s ability to deliver results customized to a user’s intent, but Janakiram says these new features aren’t a response to Bing. Of course, Google probably wouldn’t admit it if they were …