I was pleased to discover the Qwant[0] search engine recently and have found its results to be a significant improvement over those provided by DuckDuckGo. It also has some support for bangs (but the bang must be at the start of the query). I've come to rely a lot on bangs and would love to see this further supported; coincidentally I submitted feedback to them about this earlier today.
Search Bangs
11–20 of 83 posts
Re: Search Bangs
#12ddg is my default and this is the killer feature for me.
I type in "houston !gmaps" and right to google maps focused on Houston. I copy paste "[error] !so" and get relevant stack overflow search, "[actor] !imdb" etc.
Re: Search Bangs
#13Is there a really good in-depth up-to-date comparison somewhere between duckduckgo and google? For example: I don't see any advantage in those search bangs, simply searching "shoes amazon" on google will do the job, or if I really want to search a specific site one can easily do "shoes site: amazon.com", and considering all the other things google can do... duckduckgo might do some of those things, some of those even…
I frequently use !js which searches only the JavaScript portion of the Mozilla Developer Network. You can also always use the Google search results - without being profiled - by using !g (aka, best of both worlds)
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Re: Search Bangs
#14Is there a really good in-depth up-to-date comparison somewhere between duckduckgo and google? For example: I don't see any advantage in those search bangs, simply searching "shoes amazon" on google will do the job, or if I really want to search a specific site one can easily do "shoes site: amazon.com", and considering all the other things google can do... duckduckgo might do some of those things, some of those even…
simply searching "shoes amazon" will do the job, or if I really want to search a specific site one can easily do "shoes site: amazon.com"
The search bangs take you directly to the search implementation of the site in question. Sometimes this is preferred to a Google search. If you try "!amazon shoes" on DDG and "amazon shoes" on Google, you can see the difference. Basically, in any case where you would type something into a site's search box (instead of Google's), it saves you a click or from having to navigate to that site first.
Re: Search Bangs
#15Is there a really good in-depth up-to-date comparison somewhere between duckduckgo and google? For example: I don't see any advantage in those search bangs, simply searching "shoes amazon" on google will do the job, or if I really want to search a specific site one can easily do "shoes site: amazon.com", and considering all the other things google can do... duckduckgo might do some of those things, some of those even…
simply searching "shoes amazon" will do the job, or if I really want to search a specific site one can easily do "shoes site: amazon.com" The search bangs take you directly to the search implementation of the site in question. Sometimes this is preferred to a Google search. If you try "!amazon shoes" on DDG and "amazon shoes" on Google, you can see the difference. Basically, in any case where you would type something…
Oh I see... just tried it, k, can see why some like that feature, I actually think it's something a search engine isn't supposed to do, but ok, thanks for the hint :)
Re: Search Bangs
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
simply searching "shoes amazon" will do the job, or if I really want to search a specific site one can easily do "shoes site: amazon.com" The search bangs take you directly to the search implementation of the site in question. Sometimes this is preferred to a Google search. If you try "!amazon shoes" on DDG and "amazon shoes" on Google, you can see the difference. Basically, in any case where you would type something…
Oh I see... just tried it, k, can see why some like that feature, I actually think it's something a search engine isn't supposed to do, but ok, thanks for the hint :)
@neurobuddha has also been blogging about specific !bangs which is even more enlightening - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11773901 (his post is currently buried below, but he totally deserves all the karma!)
Re: Search Bangs
#17I have keyword searches [1] set up in Firefox for the sites I want quick access to. It does the same thing, but is browser-based.
[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address...
Re: Search Bangs
#18My most used bangs: ! (go to the first result) and !g (perform search on Google). Occasionally, I'll use !w (Wikipedia). They really make it easy to get to where you wanted to go.
Anyone know how !g works, particularly in the context of Google's recent changes[1]? 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11625633
It's unrelated. AKAIK !g is the equivalent of:
https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=web%20search%20a...
Re: Search Bangs
#19I have keyword searches [1] set up in Firefox for the sites I want quick access to. It does the same thing, but is browser-based. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address...
The lack of discoverability of certain features of Firefox is disappointing. They got rid of Tab Groups due to lack of popularity/usage and I'm sure Keyword Searches are just as unpopular and just as unused. It makes me wonder when they'll get the ax too.
The benefit of setting it up from within your browser is you can control the keyword/"bang". While plenty of mine are the same as the ones that exist on DDG! plenty are also different.
I feel a lot of time and effort is wasted re-implementing things that already exist in a browser without significantly altering/changing the functionality.
ps to Chrome users: Chrome also has the same functionality if you right click most any search bar, you can add keywords to search.
Re: Search Bangs
#20My most used bangs: ! (go to the first result) and !g (perform search on Google). Occasionally, I'll use !w (Wikipedia). They really make it easy to get to where you wanted to go.
!gis (google image) and !gri (reverse image) are both quite useful.