Set Up Site Search in Your Browser

The Chrome Search Engine Settings Page

I believe technology should help us be more efficient or deepen our understanding. For the past few years, I have been a big fan of using site search in my browser. Site search allows you to type in a URL and press a key to be able to search the site directly from the Omnibox or the address bar. 

This morning I was trying to get my address in Japan, which is stored in Google Keep, and I instinctively tried to hit tab so I could search through Keep for the note I was looking for. The problem was that I did not have Keep set up with site search. 

Here is how to set it up.

1. In your [Chrome-based] browser, go to Settings > Search Engine.
2. Look for Manage Search Engines.
3. Next fill out the search engine form replacing %s with the search query.

Then when you go to a site, try searching on the site. When the search is finished, it will show you a URL. 

In the example below, I am searching Google Drive. The resulting URL is https://drive.google.com/drive/search?q=the%20question

If I take off the end I find the search URL is https://drive.google.com/drive/search?q=   Then, you add %s for the search query.

Here are some sites and their site search URLs:

• Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/search?q=%s
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s&page={startPage?}&utm_source=opensearch
• Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/search/%s

• Google Keep: https://keep.google.com/u/0/#search/text%253D
• Google Translate: https://translate.google.com/?source=osdd&sl=auto&tl=auto&text=%s&op=translate

Here is a good article about how to set these up from Zapier.

Search Websites from the Omnibox

* Omnibox is the URL/search area at the very top of your browser.

The Omnibox on the Brave Browser

I recently reinstalled my browser and some of my settings were changed. One pain point for me was that I could no longer search YouTube and Drive right from the Omnibox. It is easy to go to the site and type in the search terms, but it takes time - every click counts.

What I could do before was to type in youtube.com and press the TAB key*, and I would be able to search right from there. It was really convenient. 

I was trying to remember the fancy code like below:

https://drive.google.com/drive/search?q=%s

Today I went into the Chrome Settings and found that Chrome has these settings right in the browser.

To activate it:

1. Open Settings
2. Click on Search Engine on the left menu
3. Click Manage Search Engines
4. Click activate next to the sites you want

* TAB can be changed with the space bar in the settings.