Google Search Options

There’s been a lot of talk recently about how twitter’s search will impact the search industry, mainly because of the “real-time”, “as-it’s-happening” aspect of it that hasn’t been available in Google.

Well, a couple days ago, Google released some search improvements of their own. Say hello to “search options”:

They introduce several new filtering options, most notably (IMO), the ability to filter by “recency”. I gave it a quick try by Googling my name and selecting “Past 24 hours”:

It wasn’t too bad. It included one (of several) Twitter posts from last night, a comment on a Friend Feed post, and my friend Josh Highland’s blog post from yesterday, who has me in his blog roll.

I’m guessing with time, the accuracy and completeness of these more recent results will improve. So far, though, it wasn’t too bad. Finally, Google added a few other features that are probably more fun than useful like the “Wonder Wheel” option that displays a visuallization of related searches and lets you quickly switch from one to the other:

So far, I’m a fan and I plan on leaving this option turned on. Have you tried search options? What are your reactions?