Google Drops Sort By Date But Adds before & after Search Commands

Google announced yesterday a new feature they are “beta testing” to allow searchers to filter their web searches by dates (something they had for a while but dropped from mobile – it is on desktop). So they announced a new before: and after: search operator that lets you do this. Then quietly noted that they discontinued the sort by date feature in search.

Here is the announcement:

For many searches, surfacing fresh information often ensures the best relevancy. However, sometimes people want to find older yet also relevant information. Our tools have long made this possible. Now we’re testing new before: and after: commands to make this even easier….

Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) April 9, 2019

When I saw that tweet, I kept refreshing to see when Google would say they dropped the sort by date option. 13 tweets into the thread, Google posted about that feature being retired:

Within news search, sort-by-date is very useful. That’s because we often have good confidence about the dates associated with stories. Sort-by-date works there because the dates are meaningful and valid…. pic.twitter.com/GizY7zfNpO

Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) April 9, 2019

Here is what it looked like:

I honestly thought Google added this search operator quickly (I can be wrong) because they dropped the tools to do it within the interface. Google keeps removing more and more search operators, I am surprised they took the time to add a new one?

But Danny’s tweet made it sound like this was something Google has been working on for some time – so I guess I was wrong to assume that: