Google Search Tools

Have you heard of Google's Search Tools?

My guess is that these may be new to you. Have a look at the image above. A link to the Search Tools is on the right side of the menu. Most searchers use the default which is: Any country, Any time, Any result and related to the local city. But there are other options.

In the example above, I was doing some research for an engineering company on the value of social media. The short answer is that engineers don't seem to use social media, or at least not related to their industry. They may use Google for search and Forums for information but beyond that, I think engineers are visually locked into Excel and trigonometry tables.  

As a result, I was having trouble finding articles that were relevant and recent. To narrow my search I used the Search Tool to change the time period to within a month. That gave me much better results.

Give it a try. I'm sure you will be impressed.