We spend a lot of time searching for information like news, hobbies, projects, work and more. Anything that makes searching quicker and easier is welcome. Here is a clever trick for Firefox.
Did you know that you can create your own customised searches that will save time and typing when looking for information on the web? What I am talking about here is not general searches like at Google, Bing and other search engines, but site-specific searches. Searching for content within a specific website.
Many websites have their own search facilities so you don’t have to rely on Google. For searching within a website, a site search is often better. For example, IMDB lets you search for movies, TV shows and actors, Reddit lets you search the thousands of discussion threads for interesting chat. The search box in the sidebar on this website lets you search for articles here.
Wherever there is a search box on a web page, you can create a custom search facility in Firefox. Here is how to do it.
Firefox custom search
Right click in the search box on any website you want in Firefox and select Add a Keyword for this search from the menu that appears. In the screenshot below, the search box on Reddit’s home page has been right clicked.
The search must have a name and one is suggested from the page title. It can be left as it is or changed to whatever you want. It is often too long and needs to be shortened, like ‘Search reddit’. The important thing is to enter a keyword for this search that is easy to remember. For example, you might want to use red for Reddit searches.
Notice that Folder is set to Bookmarks Toolbar. This search trick actually creates a bookmark in Firefox, so if you want to edit it, delete it or rename it at some point in the future, you can go to Firefox’s Bookmarks Manager by pressing Ctrl+Shift+B and find it.
After saving this custom search, you can now search this website no matter where you are on the internet by entering the keyword followed by the search term in the address box. For example, to search Reddit for Mars mission discussions, no matter which website we are on, we can enter ‘red mars mission’ like this:
Typing red tells Firefox that we want to search Reddit and the text to search for follows, ‘mars mission‘. The results are displayed exactly as if you had used the search facility on the Reddit website. Notice that the results are completely different to what you would see if you had entered the search term directly into Firefox’s address box or into the Google search box. We performed a site search and not a general search.
The only limitation with these custom searches is your own memory. If you created 50 of these site specific searches, you will not be able to remember all the keywords. Do not over use them. Limit them to just a handful of your favorite sites. Also use keywords that help you to remember which website you are searching, such as red for Reddit and it will help you to remember them.
Search sites everywhere
Although I used Reddit in the example here, this site search works with all websites, or at least every one I have tried. It will even work with this website. Right click the search box in the sidebar on the right and select Add a keyword for this Search. Name it RAWinfopages and set the keyword to raw. You can then search this website, even when you are not on it and are elsewhere on the web doing other things, by typing ‘raw ‘ followed by the search term in Firefox’s address box.
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