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Adding smart keywords to your online searches

I end up searching several different web sites frequently, and it’s a pain going to the site first, then entering my search term, and finally looking at the results. Luckily Firefox has a huge shortcut to this. Here’s how:

  1. Go to the page with the search form. For this example, let’s go to the MSDN  home page.
  2. In the “Search MSDN for” box in the upper right, put the mouse over the search box, and right-click. In the menu that pops up, select “Add a keyword for this search…”
  3. The “Add a Bookmark” dialog box will appear. Enter “MSDN home page” in the Name field, and enter your preferred shortcut term in the Keyword field. I’m going to use “msdn”.
  4. You can change the folder the bookmark will be created in if you want. For now accept the default and click “Ok”.
  5. Go to Google’s home page, just so you know Firefox isn’t cheating.
  6. Click in the URL bar (or press Alt+D), and type “msdn asp.net 2” without the quotes.

You should see the MSDN/Microsoft search page with the first 10 results for “ASP.NET 2”. Now go add more smart keywords!

Download Firefox now!


Posted Fri, Oct 1 2004 10:59 AM by Darrell Norton

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Comments

Jason Row wrote re: Adding smart keywords to your online searches
on Fri, Oct 1 2004 7:39 AM
Neat trick! I thought it was cool that I could simply type "google repeater control site:microsoft.com" in the address box. Then I realized, why do that when I can use the Google search textbox right next to it? (Which is now much larger thanks to your previous tip)

Then I clicked the Google icon, selected "Add Engines" and found search engines for both MSDN and support.microsoft.com.

Are you using any search engines that aren't found/available?
Darrell wrote re: Adding smart keywords to your online searches
on Fri, Oct 1 2004 8:30 AM
Excellent! That could be the next tip.
Darrell Norton's Blog wrote Adding pre-made smart keyword searches
on Mon, Oct 4 2004 7:55 AM
Adding pre-made smart keyword searches
Darrell Norton's Blog wrote Selecting the search engine in the Firefox search bar
on Thu, Oct 7 2004 7:40 AM
Selecting the search engine in the Firefox search bar
BDMatrix wrote re: Adding smart keywords to your online searches
on Thu, Nov 4 2004 4:40 PM
Nice trick! Exactly what i was looking for ! Thanx:D.

Note: I couldnt make it work w/ yahoo search . :( Any suggestions?
Darrell wrote re: Adding smart keywords to your online searches
on Fri, Nov 5 2004 1:02 AM
Joao Pedro wrote re: Adding smart keywords to your online searches
on Wed, Jan 5 2005 12:08 PM
Very cool!!!
Thanks a lot for the tip.
After adding some keywords, now I can do:
"d <word>" for a dicionary search
"w <word>" for a Wikipedia search
"a <word>" for a Amazon search
and so on.
It's faster than use the search bar!!!
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