Google often adds new features to Search so that customers can have an intuitive and rich search engine to rely on. Filtering search engine results based on a custom range is one of the amazing features here. It’s been present on the search engine for more than a decade.

Google fixes weird search engine issue

According to Google, the company has fixed an error that was causing browser tabs to freeze. This error used to happen when people tried to use the custom-range function on Google Search Engine Result Pages. Several users reported that their tabs kept freezing even before they could function correctly.

We’re aware that using the Custom Range option to restrict search results by date may cause a browser’s tab to freeze. We hope to resolve this soon. In the meantime, the before: & after: commands can be used for date restriction. More here: https://t.co/5l4HON1pxB

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) January 19, 2021

Some users added that the bug is maxing out the system’s power and CPU consumption, thereby leading to crash. People across Twitter have been reporting this error on many subsections of Google Search, such as Google News, but the company took a few days to fix it. On 19 January, Google announced through a tweet that it knows about the problem with Custom Range.

While it was looking into the matter, the tech giant asked users to rely on the “before: and after:” commands that Google had introduced almost a couple of years back. These commands do the same job of filtering search results but without involving the Custom Range module.

Google had introduced the “before: and after” commands a long while back, in 2019. It meant that users could use these phrases to filter the search engine results they would see. For instance, searching with the term “Avengers Endgame after:2019” will exclude all published results before 2019.

When it announced this feature, Google had mentioned a few power user tricks as well. It was also noted that Google search engine result pages displayed the published date against each entry when people use the “before: & after:” commands. Following the custom range bug causing freezing tabs, the “before: and after:” filtering feature has become popular again.

That Google itself recommended it as a solution has increased the reach of the feature. While it is merely a speculation, we do not know if Google created this situation as an opportunity to promote the said feature.