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Google Advanced Search, region and realtime search (Part 3 blogseries Google changes per July 2024)

In the third part of our series about the changes that Google has introduced as of July 2024, we will use Google Advanced Search. It is actually a shame that it has Advanced in the name, because it is actually just a simple way to use the advanced operators to search even more extensively with the help of Google. You can also use the operators from this advanced screen directly, Google converts the selected operators in the advanced screen to the normal search screen. If you use the advanced screen often enough and then look closely at this conversion, you will eventually learn the most important operators by heart and perhaps apply them directly.
Please note, Google Advanced in "search everything" differs from Google Advanced in "search pictures". Each subcategory has its own advanced options. In this series, we will come back to this in a next blog.

More documentation regarding Google Advanced Search Operators can be found here.

DataExpert Senior Trainer Frank Kolenbrander has recorded a video to show you on screen what he describes in this article.

We are looking for the golden tip!

If, while reading this article, you think "I have a solution for that within the Google search engine on the web", please let us know and email marketing@dataexpert.nl. The first 10 people who email a solution or tip will receive a nice DataExpert goodie sent. We will of course mention the golden tips in a subsequent blog.

Search area/ region

Google tries to adjust its results to you. For the sake of the example we are writing this as though you are from the Netherlands.  If you are based in the Netherlands you get results from the Netherlands. But how do they do that and can you influence that?

In the past, when it was still fairly simple, you simply chose google.nl, google.es or google.com to indicate that you were more interested in the Netherlands, Spain or the US. That was abandoned and Google took over from you. Based on your settings, Google automatically sent you to google.nl, google.es or google.com. You then still had the option “No Country Redirect” to send Google. First at the bottom of the Google screen, later directly via the URL. If you typed in google.com/ncr, you stayed on google.com and got different results, even if you were in the Netherlands yourself. Unfortunately, you can no longer use /ncr, or at least it is no longer useful. Google now looks at your settings and the IP address that you use. You may have noticed that when you are in Spain with your Dutch-set smartphone, you get a lot more results from Spain.

We are going to do something about that and you have a number of options for this.

  1. Use a different search engine. There is nothing wrong with this, but this series is about Google and in the first episode we explained why.
  2. Use an IP address that comes from the Netherlands. You can use an anonymous proxy or even better a VPN for this. A VPN is actually not much more than the proxy but extended with a layer of encryption, a so-called tunnel, so that no one can watch you on the road. Of course, with both the anonymous proxy and the VPN, the possibility remains that the provider of these services can watch you. We will leave that out of consideration for now.
  3. Indicate in Google that you want results in a certain language and/or from a certain area. You can find this in Google Advanced Search. You can reach the advanced screen in different ways:
    1. In the URL behind google.nl, google.es or, for example, google.com, simply type /advanced_search and press Enter.
    2. You can reach the advanced screen via the normal search screen. Make sure you have performed a search first. After this you will see the Tools button and when you click on it the Toolbar will open. Please note that this toolbar depends on your search category but also on the selected Google search engine. Google.nl has a different toolbar than google.es. In google.nl you will immediately see the choice for Any Country and Any Language in the toolbar. But that does not mean that you can actually choose another country or language there. Sorry, we didn't make it up either. Go to Advanced search and choose the language of your choice and/or the region of your choice under "Then refine your search results by...". If it still doesn't work, a stored cookie or the fact that you are logged in is probably the cause. Then try opening a tab in incognito mode (ctrl-shift-i for Chrome, ctrl-shift-p for Firefox)
    3. Of course there are more ways to limit your area. In part 2 of the Google blog series, we used the site: operator. This allows you to use site:*.es to limit your search to Spanish top-level domains. However, you do accept that a Spanish site that uses a .com top-level domain will not be included in your search.
  4. Use the inurl: operator or the allinurl: operator. With allinurl: you can specify multiple words that are in the url. Unfortunately, the url operators themselves are not very useful for limiting yourself to a specific region. For example, if you specify inurl:es, you will notice that this does not really help. Try out the difference between the following search queries:

italian restaurant barcelona site:es
allinurl: italian restaurant barcelona site:es

One is not necessarily better than the other, it is a matter of trying it out time and time again.

Real-time search

In Google, the tools allow you to make a selection based on a period. You can choose between the past hour, 24 hours, week, month, year or a custom period. With the latter option you can only choose whole days and not hours. Of course this is a nice option and you can even search in real time. But what if one hour is too short and 24 hours too long? Think of calls for violence at demonstrations or football matches. To achieve this you can adjust the Google URL, this is also known as URL manipulation.

Suppose you search for the words protest and malieveld. Your URL will then be similar to the following:

https://www.google.nl/search?q=protest+malieveld&sca_esv=b40722f7c2733765&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ADLYWIIzeiVxerWKdv3xYBEeJJyBf0KU6Q%3A1718049175948&source=hp&ei=l1lnZt--Nt61i-gPyfuAoAY&iflsig=AL9hbdgAAAAAZmdnp0wWV_yKwY__1K2Jp84DYwYXVHxu&ved=0ahUKEwif5tf259GGAxXe2gIHHck9AGQQ4dUDCBg&uact=5&oq=protest+malieveld&gs_lp=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&sclient=gws-wiz

Lets dissect this url. It starts with:

https://www.google.nl//search?q=protest+malieveld
Following the q of query you see the two search words we used.

After that you see the Google parameters. Each parameter starts with &.
Most parameters are automatically added by Google and not all arguments are documented. Some parameters are added by Google when you use filters or the tools. In the example above the arguments are seperated and highlighted with italic and underline. Wcannot mention them all unfortunately.

After that we used the Tool "Period search" to filter the search question for results of the last hour. This results in the following  url:

https://www.google.nl/search?q=protest+malieveld&sca_esv=b40722f7c2733765&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ADLYWIIyvvovCnTWotNdviwD8fx6wMLBeQ:1718049181594&source=lnt&tbs=qdr:h&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjavbP559GGAxUK7AIHHe1BBYQQpwV6BAgFEBg&biw=1163&bih=508&dpr=1.65

In the url you search for the parameter &tbs-qdr:h and this is the parameter that you will change. 

The h stands for hour, the d stands for day, the w stands for week, the M stands for Month.
In this example you see the h for hour and we add 4 after that so &tbs-qdr:h4
After hitting Enter you will see you've filtered on the last 4 hours. If you accidentally put the 4 in front of the h you'll see all results and there will be no filter. Do you want to search the last 2 weeks for example the use &tbs-qdr:w2

You can even seach in minutes; m is already in use for Month, but you can use the next letter in the alphabet - the letter n - you'll see that you're getting results in minutes. Even seconds is possible but wherther that is useful I'll leave up to you.

When you use a filter often then its recommended to create a favorite for it, for example the url:
https://www.google.nl/search?q=zoekvraag&tbs=qdr:h4

You'll notice the other parameters have been left out, that is no problem. When you start this url, you'll be looking up the word zoekvraag with filter the last 4 hours. You'll only need to change the owrd zoekvraag. 

A sitesearch within Chrome is even easier, then you can execute this url directly with the desired search question.

Google sort on date:

We have just seen that we can create a filter by date and time, but Google removed sorting by date and time a long time ago when showing “all search results”. In the logarithm, date and time do have an important influence but are no longer a decisive factor. However, there are still some possibilities. If you go to “News” and then choose Tools, you will see that the results are shown by Relevance, but that you can choose to sort by date. When studying the URL, you will discover that Google uses the parameter &tbs=sbd:1 for this. Unfortunately, we have not yet succeeded in sorting All results by date by means of URL manipulation.

There is another possibility to sort “all” results by date. For this you can use a search engine within Google, the Customized Search Engine (CSE). We are happy to explain this to you in our OSINT-Advanced training.

In our next blog we will start working on searching in forums. For this we will not only use the operators intitle: and inurl: but we will also use an old Google option Forums. Unfortunately, this can no longer be found in the Google tools and/or filters, but it is still accessible by means of url manipulation. We will therefore make good on our promise to take another good look at the Google Cache Text version.

Keep an eye on the next newsletter for Part 4 of this Google blog series.

Has this topic piqued your interest and do you want to follow training to further develop your skills in the field of OSINT research, then view our entire OSINT training offer here.