It seems like every day you read about some new fake web site or site network spewing disinformation or AI slop into Google results. One of my strategies for getting around this search crud is restricting my search to authoritative sources, like FCC-licensed outlets, or known resources, like NPR stations. But Google makes this difficult. To the best of my knowledge you can’t get a list of outlets being indexed by Google News and the location syntax hasn’t worked in years.

I felt this keenly when I wanted to do some research on Troy Jackson and the other new candidates for the US Senate after Graham Platner dropped out. I didn’t want to just throw Troy Jackson’s name into Google to get what I get. I wanted to be able to search Maine news sources between 2018 and 2024 (when Jackson was president of the Maine senate) for mentions of him.

So I made Peabody Search, named after Mr. Peabody and his Wayback Machine. He could set his time machine to go to a particular year and place, and that’s what this tool does as well (though it’s restricted to US states.)

Peabody Search walks you through the process of setting the query, selecting the years, choosing a state, and then choosing outlets from that state.

At the end of it you get Google search query links incorporating your time and location search information. Click one and the results open in a new tab. (I do this instead of incorporating the Google search via its API because I cannot afford the Google search via its API! Also this way I can keep the tool free.)

I have fun plans for Peabody Search including incorporating Wikidata so I can pull informed dates into the search, but it works really good even without that. Bear in mind that if you search all the way back in 1995, your results may be limited; Some outlets didn’t really get going on the Web until long after that.

Stay tuned as I flesh this out and add more features!