Webtip #4: Chrome Search Engines

Name: "Manage Search Engines"

Platform: Google Chrome

URL: chrome://settings/searchEngines (link only works on Google Chrome)

Where/how I came across it: Exploring chrome settings

What it does: Allows you to manage your default search engines on Google Chrome, and more importantly, set up keyboard shortcuts for specific site searches. 

Google Chrome is one of today's modern browsers, and currently ranks third in the browser wars (behind Internet Explorer and Firefox). It was released about two years ago, is currently used by around 12% of web users, and has set the standard for many features now offered across all major browsers. Because it is open source, you also have browsers based on Chrome, such as Rockmelt, which is really neat if you like multitasking with social networks. If you haven't already, I suggest you give Chrome a spin: it's not perfect - you may run into the occasional site that is not supported - but it's fast, has several features, is secure, is fast, is very stable, has plenty of extensions, can play angry birds, and have I mentioned it's fast? Today's webtip is one of my favourite features of Chrome: search engine settings. 

If you use Chrome a lot, you'll have noticed that certain sites, like Wikipedia and Youtube, will allow you to search its site after typing in a few letters of its url. For example, say I want to find a Beatles music clip quiz on Sporcle, one of my favourite websites and sources of procrastination. Instead of going to Sporcle's website, and entering the search terms into its search box, I can go there directly from the chrome omnibox (the main box where the website url goes).

(1) I go to the omnibox and start typing sporcle's url (sporcle.com). I type an 's', and some suggested sites are listed. (2) By the type I type the 'p', a message pops up telling me to "press tab to search sporcle.com". (3) So I press tab and a blue box tells me that I'm searching sporcle.com. (4) I enter the search terms and press enter... and (5) voila - the results page!

The best part is that you can set keyboard shortcuts to do the same thing. So instead of typing 'sp', pressing tab, and then entering your search term, you can shorten this further and reduce it just to an 's'. Just go to "Options" on the dropdown menu from the Chrome wrench, and click on "Manage search engines..." on the "Basics" tab (that tab is the first one and should already be open). Alternatively, you can put this as the url: chrome://settings/searchEngines.

Under a list of "other search engines", you'll see the search functions of the sites you've visited before - perhaps hundreds if you're a heavy user. For each site, there are three options: a title, a shortcut, and the search url. Change your shortcut into something shorter (instead of the default, which is the url of the site), such as "s". Note: you can also add search engines/shortcuts this way.

The third field is the search url, which for sporcle, is "http://www.sporcle.com/search/?p=1&s=%s". (if you want to add a new site, just go to your site, and search for "test". Copy paste the url, and replace "test" with "%s". Protip: For McMaster students who use pubmed and are tired of logging into libaccess for every article they open can search pubmed through libaccess directly by setting up a shortcut with "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.libaccess.lib.mcmaster.ca/pubmed?term=%s" as the search url. You only need to login in once.

You can set up lots and lots and lots .

What does the shortcut do? Here's an example. I've set my youtube shortcut to "y". 

On another browser, you would have
1) clicked bookmark or typed youtube.com 2) loaded youtube 3) entered search term 4) loaded results page.

On Chrome, you'd usually:

1) start typing youtube.com 2) press tab and enter search term 3) load results page.

With additional fiddling, you can:
1) type "y " plus the search term, 2) load results page. 

So to see a page of lizard videos, all I have to do is go to the url box, type "y lizards", and press enter.

It takes only a few seconds from opening a new window/tab before I land on the video results page.

Using these shortcuts can make your web surfing a lot faster. It might not seem like much, but it's at least 5 seconds less each time you use it, and that's assuming a fast internet connection. I find this shortcut most useful when the internet is frustratingly slow, because you skip loading that media heavy youtube front page, or avoid another possibility for the site to time out. Just type and go. You spend less time waiting, use less of your internet bandwidth, and spend more of your time surfing the web. Awesome.