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Google has added new features to Search Options, an offering it released in May that enables users to filter and terrace search results from a side panel.

New, rather self-explanatory search filter options include:

• Past hour
• Specific date range
• More shopping sites
• Fewer shopping sites
• Visited pages
• Not-yet-visited pages
• Books
• Blogs
• News

Users can try the features by running a Google search and clicking "Show options" below the logo.

In particular, the More/Fewer Shopping Sites features lend insight on when a person is poised to purchase, versus when s/he is just conducting product research — potentially poising Google in a more authoritative position within the e-commerce sector.

Search Product Manager Nundu Janakiram, who wrote the blog post informing users of the new features, told The New York Times that the Past-Hour option reflects Google's ongoing indexing and crawling of the web. He also took care to differentiate it from "real-time search," which is what's made Twitter so attractive to marketers: the ability to search in real-time through ongoing conversations on the 'net.

In the persuasive light of Janakiram, The New York Times dubbed real-time search "much ballyhooed and somewhat amorphous."