Robin Camille Davis
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Custom searching in Chrome

August 04, 2011

Quick tip for Chrome users! (I hear this is also possible in Firefox.) You can set custom searches. For example, I can type "wik Saarinen" into the URL/search bar, and the results page on Wikipedia will show up. Or I can type "wrf avouer", and the definition of avouer in English will pop up from WordReference. I also have custom searches set for the OED, Oxford DNB, IMDB, WorldCat, Amazon, and others:

To add custom searches to your Chrome browser, go to Chrome > Preferences > Basics > Search > Manage Search Engines. Name the search engine, use a quick keyword that you'll type in the search bar, and then add the URL of a search results page with %s in place of the search query (you'll probably want to do a test search to get the last one).

When I type "imdb" and then a space and then my query, it looks like this:

Another fun fact: I learned this on the toilet at Google's DC office! They have a thing called "Learning on the Loo" where they tape fun tutorials to the door at sitting-on-the-loo eye-level.