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How to sort Google search results by date

Sometimes…

… you just want to see your search results sorted by date. How can you do this?

Turns out it’s not hard, just slightly obscure.

Here’s a simple way to do it…


First, do your search, then limit by time, THEN you can sort the results by date. Here’s the same example query as in the video:

Then click on “Tools” (1) in the image below.
This will popup a time-restriction set of options (2).

Select whatever time period you want (including a custom range).
Then click on the menu that says “Sorted by relevance” and it will popup two options, including “Sorted by date” (3). When you select that option…
.… it will sort the results for you in reverse chronological order.


This is incredibly handy for looking at the results of site: search. Here’s a nice example: Suppose you want to read the latest articles on “coral bleaching” from the magazine Science News. Here’s what you get if you JUST limit the articles to the past 17 years.



Those are great results, but if you look at them SORTED, the results are rather different… (and more useful).



And now you know how.

Enjoy!

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(And if you want to know how to hack the URL… )

The key step is to append your sorting instructions at the end of the search URL.

Here’s a short video showing you how to do this:

The video shows you how, but here are the steps written out:

1. Do a search for whatever you’d like.
You’ll see the SERP with all of the results in relevance order

2. Append &tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:1/1/0,sbd:1 to the end of the search URL
(be sure to copy this string exactly)

3. Hit enter, and you’ll see your results in reverse chronological order, with the most recent results on top. (And you can get all of the results since 1 BC! Admittedly, there’s not a lot of results before 1990, but if there were…)



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