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Search Bangs

duckduckgo.com

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Re: Search Bangs

#31

Post by tagawa »

JasonSage wrote: post #28

I use bangs very frequently and quite like them. Probably the ones I use most are !gh to search github or !npm to search npm (although npmsearch.com is often more useful). One thing I wish I could do was combine the first-result bang (!) with other bangs (like !gh). That would translate into "take me to the first result on github for these search terms..."

Good idea but I think that wouldn't be practically possible. We redirect you to third-party sites but we don't know what the first results on those sites are.

Technically I suppose it's possible to "scrape ahead" and get the top result in the background before redirecting the user, but some sites change search results based on your profile/behaviour so it could be inaccurate. It may also be against those sites' terms and conditions.

Re: Search Bangs

#32

Post by bhrgunatha »

hrktb wrote: post #24
cisstrd wrote: post #7

Is 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…

Where google has lost me is on country detection. It's virtually impossible to change country context. NCR feature disappeared, and even choosing a specific language for the search results won't prevent some results from one's country to bubble up at the top (i.e. if I am in France, setting the interface in english and asking results for 'any region' will still boost french results) It's just huge PITA to search for…

Websites that choose display language based on IP address is the bane of my existence and google is the absolute worst site for doing this. I used to use ncr constantly for any google related task. I don't trust google enough any more to log in and set language preferences - I only allow their web properties to store session cookies when needed. The best I can do with google is to write a dumb greasemonkey script to add 'hl=en' to any google URLs.

Re: Search Bangs

#33

Post by bhrgunatha »

mdturnerphys wrote: post #17

I 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...

I use ddg, but I also have a bunch of keyword searches in firefox too (about 25) because they've been supported for longer than ddg and I seem to spend more time in the URL bar than the search box. It was a joy to find the keyword search extension for firefox [1] that provides a context menu and let's you highlight text on a page and choose from one of your keyword searches from a ciontext menu.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/keyword-bookm...

Re: Search Bangs

#34

Post by losingkeys »

tagawa wrote: post #31
JasonSage wrote: post #28

I use bangs very frequently and quite like them. Probably the ones I use most are !gh to search github or !npm to search npm (although npmsearch.com is often more useful). One thing I wish I could do was combine the first-result bang (!) with other bangs (like !gh). That would translate into "take me to the first result on github for these search terms..."

Good idea but I think that wouldn't be practically possible. We redirect you to third-party sites but we don't know what the first results on those sites are. Technically I suppose it's possible to "scrape ahead" and get the top result in the background before redirecting the user, but some sites change search results based on your profile/behaviour so it could be inaccurate. It may also be against those sites' terms…

What about sort of appending site:GitHub.com and going to the first result there? Not always the first result you'd see, but it might work okay.

Re: Search Bangs

#35

Post by mikevb »

JasonSage wrote: post #28

I use bangs very frequently and quite like them. Probably the ones I use most are !gh to search github or !npm to search npm (although npmsearch.com is often more useful). One thing I wish I could do was combine the first-result bang (!) with other bangs (like !gh). That would translate into "take me to the first result on github for these search terms..."

npmsearch.com has its own bang! !npms

Re: Search Bangs

#36

Post by stephengillie »

JasonSage wrote: post #28

I use bangs very frequently and quite like them. Probably the ones I use most are !gh to search github or !npm to search npm (although npmsearch.com is often more useful). One thing I wish I could do was combine the first-result bang (!) with other bangs (like !gh). That would translate into "take me to the first result on github for these search terms..."

If you can live without the bang, you could just add a search engine to Chrome with the text "gh". Then, prepending "gh" to a search would just search Github.

Re: Search Bangs

#37

Post by mgnn »

mdturnerphys wrote: post #17

I 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...

I use that too. One of Bangs' advantage is it has suggestions, so I don't have to memorize all the keywords I've set. Of course, Bangs work with keyword search (e.g. du !amazon alice in wonderland), but you lose the suggestion.

In any case I mostly use keywords to search google, youtube, and wikipedia in several languages, so I don't see bangs having much utility for me.

Re: Search Bangs

#38

Post by mistermann »

cisstrd wrote: post #7

Is 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…

> it seems like the author(s) don't know a lot about google's capabilities

It seems to me Google is determined to keep its features a secret from users. Why isn't there an easy to use and easy to find advanced search screen?

Re: Search Bangs

#39

Post by snarkyturtle »

stephengillie wrote: post #36
JasonSage wrote: post #28

I use bangs very frequently and quite like them. Probably the ones I use most are !gh to search github or !npm to search npm (although npmsearch.com is often more useful). One thing I wish I could do was combine the first-result bang (!) with other bangs (like !gh). That would translate into "take me to the first result on github for these search terms..."

If you can live without the bang, you could just add a search engine to Chrome with the text "gh". Then, prepending "gh" to a search would just search Github.

The thing about bangs is that it's a curated, auto-updating list of shortcuts though. I could install my own but with ddg, I just throw a ! in front of the site and usually it works!

Re: Search Bangs

#40

Post by snarkyturtle »

mikevb wrote: post #35
JasonSage wrote: post #28

I use bangs very frequently and quite like them. Probably the ones I use most are !gh to search github or !npm to search npm (although npmsearch.com is often more useful). One thing I wish I could do was combine the first-result bang (!) with other bangs (like !gh). That would translate into "take me to the first result on github for these search terms..."

npmsearch.com has its own bang! !npms

I feel like ddg's instant results for 'npm foo' is a lot more accurate than both of these suggestions.
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