How I use Google Chrome custom search engines for quick access
Posted: - Modified: | geek, productivity, tipsI move as much as I can of what I know to the Web so that other people can use what I share. Added benefit: I can find things quickly! I use custom search engine shortcuts to help me quickly look up stuff. For example, I frequently refer to blog posts. I can type “b search terms” into my Chrome address bar to search my blog. Neat, huh? Here are the search engines I've defined.
| Blog | b | https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Asachachua.com+%s |
| Blog category | bc | https://sachachua.com/blog/category/%s |
| Blog tag | bt | https://sachachua.com/blog/tag/%s |
| Flickr – mine | f | http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=65214961@N00&q=%s |
| Flickr tag | ft | ~http://flickr.com/photos/sachac/tags/%25s |
| Google Drive | d | https://drive.google.com/a/sachachua.com/#search/%s |
| Google Calendar | c | https://www.google.com/calendar/render?q=TERM |
| GMail | m | https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?pli=1#search/%s |
| Google Contacts | p | https://www.google.com/contacts/?q=%s |
| Trello | t | https://trello.com/search?q=%s |
Here's how you can define your own search engines:
- Click on the menu button.
- Choose Settings > Manage Search Engines.
- Scroll to the bottom of the Other search engines list.
- Add your own, one at a time.
%s will be replaced by the search terms from the command line.
Super handy!
Try setting up search engines for yourself. It takes a few minutes to set up one, and it makes searching so much easier.
3 comments
Bao Haojun
2014-04-23T04:11:07ZI have done something similar, on the command line, for e.g., I can type 's search terms', and a dialog will show a list of search engines to allow me to choose from. If I'm not on the terminal, then the same script will use sawfish script to ask me the same question, which search engine?
Then the search engines are sorted according to their recency of use, so most times I can type return immediately, or type 2 return to select the 2nd engine, or type goo return to match and select the "google" search engine.
zita_w
2015-01-05T08:21:12ZThanks for the tip! I found (by accident of course) that when I right click in the search bar of a site, one of my options is 'Add As Search Engine' which makes the process even more simple :)
sachac
2015-01-07T22:51:11ZYup! You can edit it afterwards or add a new one if you decide to give it a shorter keyword. =)