Search with Google from the IE Address bar
A little trick that saves a lot of time
June 2005 (Updated Nov 2006)
I use Google as the main tool to find info on the Internet, a Zillion times a day. After some time I got tired to browse each time to the Google home page for the search.
Here's my favorite solution to search with Google in zero time.
Contents:
How it works
You enter g foxpop bluetooth in the Internet Explorer Address bar, then Google comes up with the results page for the words foxpop and bluetooth.
How to set it up
-
TweakUI for Windows XP gives you the most control and the nice interface to control prefix searches.
Install TweakUI for Windows XP from
here (part of Powertoys for Windows XP).
In Tweak UI, go to
Internet Explorer/Search. Click
Create and enter
Prefix:
g
URL:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%s
- As an alternative to installing tweakui, you can alter the registry:
Either download and run this registry file: google_ie_addressbarsearch_g.reg (this version converts the characters space + # ? & = to the appropirate codes for the search).
Or you can also add this registry setting by hand, Start Menu\Run...\regedit and browse to
StartMenu/Run.../Regedit/HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\g
and enter the value http://www.google.com/search?q=%s as default.
If there is no g entry yet, click Edit/New/Key/g.
Tips
-
When using English Windows, for accented characters, tell Google which code page you use.
Ex. for g adás vétel, modify the search URL to this:
g - http://www.google.com/search?ie=windows-1250&q=%s
UTF-8 works universally with almost all characters, like u перестройка (this example with javascript):
u -
javascript:window.location='http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q='+encodeURI('%s')
Though, the simple search URL without code page info is usually enough in localized versions of Windows, this is an important tip for many non-English speaking users as it's missing on most pages about prefix search. I've been using prefix search for years, but it never worked for accented Hungarian characters. I got the answer from a local IT forum recently and was so happy to get it finally working that was inspired to post this article so others can benefit, too. Now this tip saves me each time the two seconds of brwosing to the Google home page when I want to search in Hungarian - great!
- Look for defintions with Google:
d - http://www.google.com/search?&q=define:%s
- Look for articles in answers.com:
a - http://www.answers.com/%s
- Direct searches at imdb.com:
film - http://www.imdb.com/Find?select=Titles&for=%s (Film titles only.)
imdb - http://www.imdb.com/Find?select=All&for=%s (General search at imdb.com.)
-
I don't like when IE begins to search at msn.com for unknown domain names etc., because it can cause problems when entering site names without the
http:// prefix (which I always do). Therefore I turn this feature off.
IE / Tools / Internet Options... / Advanced / Search from the Address bar / Do not search from the Address bar
Note that this feature doesn't influence searching with prefixes from the Address bar.
-
Note that
the setting Always send URLs as UTF-8 doesn't influence prefix searches with Google, but affects non-ASCII characters in URLs (ex. http://foxpop.com/conference/adás_vétel.ppt).
-
You can set up Google to pop-up the search results in a new window. For this, go to Preferences on the Google home page.
- To use Google as a calculator, simply enter g 45+36.
There are other methods to perform searches with Google directly from Internet Explorer, like make Google the default search engine, then the Google Toolbar or the Google Deskbar.
However, I have found searching with prefixes from the Address bar this is the fastest and simplest way. What is more, it doesn't use up extra screen space.
Have you other favorite search sites, send me the prefix + search url to include here under tips.
Thanks for KovacsUR from forum.hwsw.hu for the tips on accented characters and code pages.
Links
Update
Nov 2006
A other search features to add as a prefix:
- Look for Music on Google, like track list of a certain album (good for mp3 id tagging)
m - http://www.google.com/musicsearch?q=%s
- Wikipedia.org articles
w - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s
Or just type "g wiki abba" to bring up the Abba article on Wiki trough Google. There's detailed info on wiki integration here.
- Complete Google search features of Google Help Center \ Google Web Search Features
Last edited on 20-Nov-2006.
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(c) Imre Oliver Kozak and @Foxpop.
