Custom Browser Search Queries

I’m lazy efficient and therefore don’t want to do more work than necessary, especially with any sort of repetitive tasks. I do a lot of searches from the address bar in Firefox, so I make good use out of Firefox’s built-in search tools.

Most modern browsers offer a simple search bar, however additional, more powerful tools are available if you dig into your browser settings.

Below I’ve listed 2 methods of adding new custom search options to Firefox, though Chrome (and I assume other browsers) have similar options.

Easy Method

The easiest way, in Firefox at least, is to right-click a search box on the site you’d like to use and select “Add a keyword for this search,” then add a memorable keyword that will act as the trigger for your specific search, and save.

This creates a new entry in the Bookmarks > Search Engines folder that you can trigger by typing the keyword in the address bar, followed by your search.

Example: go to Wikipedia, right-click the search bar, add your keyword as “wiki” and save. In the address bar you can now type “wiki whatever” and it’ll open up the corresponding search results page for that query on Wikipedia.

Manual Method + Search Operators

The second method is a bit more manual, but is a good option if the option above isn’t available and if you’d like a bit more control over searches in Google or DuckDuckGo (or Bing, if you’re a psycho).

Go to the search engine and perform a search. For bonus points, add in search operators for that website. Here is the Search Operator list from DuckDuckGo, as far as I’m aware these are pretty universal.

For example: I want to set up a search in DuckDuckGo that shows only results from Reddit, because Reddit’s search tool sucks and I generally default to Reddit user content when I’m looking up anything.

So I’ve searched for “site:reddit.com example” which brings up the search results and shows a URL of:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Areddit.com+example

Copy the URL, open Bookmarks Manager > Bookmarks Menu > Search Engines and add a new bookmark. Give it a name and short keyword (like “red”), then paste your URL into the URL box, but change the “example” text to %s, which is a stand-in for your search query, then save. So it’ll look like:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Areddit.com+%s

Now when you do a search from the address bar starting with “red yoursearchquery” it’ll open to DuckDuckGo and show your search filtered to only show results from Reddit.

In Chrome, these functions are under Settings > Search engine > Manage search engines and site search.

Examples

Here are a handful that I regularly use.

• General
  • red opens the previously mentioned Reddit site search in DDG
  • maps opens Google Maps
• Media
  • /son and /rad open up searches for my TV and movie managers
  • leech or day open up my preferred torrent trackers
  • geek opens up my preferred NZB indexer
  • yt opens YouTube
• Shopping
  • ama opens an Amazon search
  • ali opens an AliExpress search
  • etsy opens an Etsy search
  • mark opens FB Marketplace

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