Google search settings missing?

MOH

Am I going nuts?
Just tried searching on Google, and the options to refine the search (by type, day, etc) that are usually displayed down the left are gone.

I know recently there was a toggle for these that defaulted to 'Everythin', but I'm not even seeing that now. Have to go into 'Advanced search' to refine the options. It's a major pain.


Is it just me?

[edit]
OK, this is weird. It's only happening in Chrome, works OK in IE.
Looking at it in Chrome dev tools, it's there but the entire #leftnav div is being set to display:none

I'm also getting a message in Google's help pages that cookies are turned off when they're not, but I don't think that's related, I'm getting the same thing in IE anyway.

fionny

Working fine for me in Chrome, the bar appears AFTER you search.

GAAman

fionny wrote: »

Working fine for me in Chrome, the bar appears AFTER you search.

Yep this is what you do. I noticed the same problem recently and now I just hit a few random keys and hit enter then you have the gear button on the side to change settings.

MOH

Thanks, it's obviously just me then. Wasn't sure if it was Google trying something new.

I have the bar at the top with the # of results and the gear icon to the right, it's the dropdown on the left where it says 'Everything' that's not being displayed.

GAAman

Ah sorry thought you meant the main settings (the gear button), yeah I am on chrome and "Everything" comes up on the left hand side for me. Have you changed anything recently on chrome, or a google sign in you use? I have noticed google trying to push the use/creation of google accounts in little ways for a while now.

MOH

Well that was weird, and a waste of two hours.

IE worked fine, signed in or not.
Chrome didn't work, even if I signed out.
Disabled all extensions, and ran a scan for anything dodgy, and still wasn't working.

In the end I logged out of my google account again, and deleted all google-related cookies.

Tried again and got the sidebar straight away.

I know they've been messing around this week with hiding the search filters and just displaying 'Everything' at the top and requiring you to click that to see the filters - it was only happening for some people.
I was getting that a couple of days ago, now I'm seeing all the filters straight away.
I'm guessing there was some flag set in one of the cookies that was hiding the search options until I clicked on the 'everything' dropdown, but then they changed something else that stopped the dropdown displaying, leaving me in limbo.

Damn you Google.
Bring back Altavista I say!

Torqay

MOH wrote: »

Bring back Altavista I say!

Using one search engine only in the hope that it has all the answers you need is a bit delusional, no matter how much you refine your queries, no?