Microsoft updates Bing to let you sort your search results by time period: Past 24 hours, week, or month

Microsoft on Wednesday updated Bing with a new option for users to sort results by time period. After you perform a search, you can choose to reorder the results by “Past 24 hours”, “Past week,” or “Past month.”

The option is available right beside the number of results that Bing returns. All you have to do is click the “Any time” drop-down menu and choose one of the other three options.

Here’s how it looks:

At first glance, it would appear that Google doesn’t have this feature. Yet I know it does because I use it in Google News all the time to see who broke a story first. It turns out the option is there, but it’s just buried under the “Search Tools” button:

Notice that Google actually offers another option: “Past Year.” While it’s probably the least useful of the four, it’s odd that Bing doesn’t have an equivalent.

In fact, Microsoft could have added more options to filter by specific day, specific week, and specific month. Would it be that hard to throw in a mini calendar that could let you specify the time period from exact day to day?

Microsoft says its goal “is to give you the most comprehensive and trustworthy set of search results so you can get more done.” If that were true, the company would surely be able to offer more options than Google does.

After all, Microsoft is still playing catch-up here. It needs to do more than just match what Google already offers. To be fair, it’s nice that Bing’s option is only one click away, while Google’s takes two clicks.

See also – Microsoft’s Bing social sidebar gets more context with Facebook status updates, links, and comments and Microsoft expands Bing Tags to public results, lets you tag Facebook friends on Twitter and more

Top Image Credit: Chris Gilbert