Mental Quick Search for Fast Web Scouring
Thursday, February 21, 2008 by Chris Lesinski Ohhhhh my goodness -- this is such a good hack. Simple, powerful and flashy. You will be so popular if you use this. I'm going to teach you how to download Quicksilver into your HEAD! Doesn't sound healthy does it? Wait and see...
For those unfamiliar with Quicksilver and others who don't understand my cryptic references yet, here's what you're going to be able to do by the time I'm finished here: search for things on the net faster than anyone. And we all know how much time is spent just searching.
You might be asking yourself: what could I do if I had Quicksilver in my head? Well, first of all, you wouldn't need to download it on to your computer. So, if you think it's a confusing RAM-eater, you can use your mind instead with this trick. But I also use this all the time because a lot of the computers I use don't have QS: at the office, at the library, in my pocket (iPhone)...
Basically, all you get to download is the "quick search" kind of function from Quicksilver. You get to skip right to the results page.
Ready to do it? Here we go. Commence download... memorize this:
wikipedia.org/wiki/ask.com/web?q=google.com/search?q=dictionary.com/search?q=imdb.com/find?q=
Maybe you're already catching on. Instead of searching for things by using the search bar on a site's homepage, you put that information right into the URL. So, if I was searching for the definition of "smarmy" I would type "dictionary.com/search?q=smarmy" right into the URL bar and it'd take me right to the results page. No mouse-clicking required.
A few notes:
General rules
There's a pattern there, somewhat. The only thing that isn't so intuitive is the part that comes right before the search terms: "?q=". But it's the same for them all, so it's not that difficult. In general, most websites use "search?q=" after their homepage URL -- so you can give that a try if you're going to make your own.
Also: usually, a space is a "+" instead. An example: "dictionary.com/search?q=smarmy+amry". If you're going to apply this to other websites, be aware that "%20" is sometimes substituted for a space as well.
Wikipedia
For the most part, I'm not "searching" wikipedia. Instead, I want to go right to the page. That's what "wikipedia.org/wiki/" does. In my opinion, this is the best one to know. But for times when you need to search, you could memorize this "wikipedia.org/wiki/?search=" which is the boiled-down deal for Wikipedia -- but I think it creates confusion since the question mark is in a weird place. You might as well load the page that tells you the article doesn't exist, then just type the query into the box right on the page. At that point, you've already wasted a bunch of time.
Note that in Wikipedia article URLs, the spaces are neither "+" nor "%20" -- they're an underscore.
Option 2: The Google Site Search
Another thing you can try, which might be faster for some people, is the Google "site" search. Google indexes a lot of pages, so many that their search might be just as comprehensive as a site's built-in search -- but not always. As long as you trust this logic, you can use Google's search and filter out everything that doesn't come from the site you're searching through.
Put in the search terms and follow them with "site:" then, the URL. So, an IMDB search for Christian Bale looks like so, "christian bale site: imdb.com," and the first hit in the results is precisely what I wanted.
The reason this is at all comparable is because some browsers have a Google search bar built right in. You can tab over from the URL bar to the search and you won't have to memorize anything but the websites -- which you already know.
Have a Search Party
That's it! Told you it was good. It takes some getting-used-to because we infrequently use the "=" and "+" keys. After you've tried it a bunch of times it'll become second-nature and ultimately save you a lot of time. The real time-saver comes from not waiting for a search query page to load first. It's also especially nice if you're using a slow mobile network or an otherwise slow connection. You can skip right to the search results.
Reader Comments (5)
To get up to your Google search box quickly in Firefox, just hit Ctrl+K (or Apple+K if on a Mac).
I like this post :).
I read this in my RSS feed, and thought it sounded very interesting and useful but I was deeply disappointed after reading the whole article.
That's really nothing like Quicksilver.
Quicksilver is fast and intuitive, this requires memorization and a lot of typing.
There is a MUCH faster way if you use Firefox. You can set keywords to your bookmarks and use %s in the link...
Examples:
You bookmark "http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/%s" and you set it to keyword "d"
Then when you type "d apple" in the address bar, Firefox takes you to the page that defines apple.
Bookmarking "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s" with keyword "w" allows you to type "w apple" for Wikipedia's entry on apples.
Or you can set up a keyword bookmark/search. For example: go to imdb.com and right click on the search box and then select "Add a keyword for this search." Name it IMDB and then you can simply type "imdb Christian Bale" into the url bar and you're there.
I think you have a few typos in some of your search queries... "seatch", for instance.
I suck. Thanks for the head's up.
We don't need copy editors here at HC -- we just have really smart readers.