Meta-Whata?

In his blog article "Searching for History" William J. Turkel uses AOL's famously leaked search data to discuss history-related internet search trends. Turkel discusses a variety of trends, including limiting searches by geography (i.e. searching for "American History" or "European History") and even searches for deleting one's own browsing history. 

The most interesting aspect of the article for me, however, was his discussion of limiting searches by date range.  As a historian, I often find myself attempting to limit internet searches by date ranges.  It's par for the course in my line of work.  Apparently lots of other people are trying to limit their history-related searches by date range too, but as Turkel points out this kind of internet search is tricky.  Turkel writes, "Unfortunately, searcing for '1400s' won't yield dates in the range of 1400-1499, it will merely match the literal string '1400s.'"  Likewise, if you googled "1400-1499" you'd only match the literal string "1400-1499."  It won't give you a real range unless the source contains the exact numbers "1400-1499."  That leaves a lot to be desired, doesn't it? 

This article was written in 2006, and as far as I can tell search engines stil haven't caught on to the historians' need to search the internet for sources by historic date ranges.  You can limit searches by date published (i.e. the date something appeared on the internet), but that doesn't help us much when we're trying to search for information on a home built sometime between 1850 and 1875, now does it? 

It would be nice if a standard language for limiting searches by date ranges existed, but the truth is it doesn't.  Metadata or meta tags that are supposed to help standardize internet language to aid users in searching the vast internet for data do exist, but they're only as good as the person inputting them and many times these tags are vague. 

I am the first to admit that while I do know how to edit my HTML to include meta tags, it is often a big game of trial and error to get it right.  I always test my tags by googling something related to my post to see what pops up, and sometimes my tags work and sometimes they don't.  When they don't work I have to try again. 

So where does that leave historians trying to google U.S. Halloween customs in the 1940s? *shrug*  I suppose it leaves us performing multiple google searches using tons of different date ranges (1940s, 1940-1949, 1941, etc)  to try to ensure we hit on every viable source about our topic.