Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Google is giving web surfers a few more ways to refine their search results, signalling its resolve to ward off rival Microsoft's aggressive campaign to lure traffic.
The changes might be hard to notice because they require clicking on a "show options" link above Google's search results. The feature has been around since May, making it possible to focus the results exclusively on videos, discussion forums, reviews or books. Now news and blogs are joining the list of options.
Microsoft introduced similar features for limiting search results to specific categories as part of a June upgrade that renamed its search engine as Bing.
In another new wrinkle, Google is allowing users to limit the listed results to information indexed within the past hour. Google already had options that restricted results to the past day, week or year.
Google's users also will be able to tell the search engine whether they want to see more or fewer results geared toward shopping.
The extra bells and whistles are being introduced while Bing has been helping Microsoft gain momentum in search, a lucrative field because it drives so much of the advertising on the web.
Helped by a $100 million (£62 million) marketing campaign, Microsoft's US share of the search market climbed to 9.3 per cent in August from 8 per cent in May, according to comScore.
Meanwhile, Google has been able to maintain its huge lead, handling 65 per cent of US Web searches.
Microsoft hopes to process even more requests beginning next year by handling searches for Yahoo, which has been processing 19 per cent of US search queries.
Even though it plans to rely on Microsoft's technology, Yahoo also has been adding more features to its search results in hopes of gaining more traffic, too.
Google said its latest changes were driven by the shifting demands of its audience.
"Our users are asking more and more from search engines," said Nundu JanakiRam, an associate product manager for the Mountain View-based company.
"They have questions that we didn't even dream they would be asking a few years ago.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments