How to Search Your Favorite Sites Directly Bypass Google

Let’s say you want to use your computer to search for products on Amazon or videos on YouTube.

The long way is to open either site in your web browser and use the respective search box to find what you’re looking for. An equally laborious approach is to search on Google and hope it provides the results you’re looking for.

However, there is a faster way to search your desktop network for your favorite web browser, which takes less than a minute to set up. Once you’ve done this, you’ll be able to search directly on sites like Amazon, YouTube, Spotify, and Wikipedia with just one click.

Search your favorite websites using bookmarklets

A bookmarklet is a special type of bookmark that allows you to To execute commands quickly, searching is one of the best ways to use them. By setting up some site-specific search bookmarks, you can directly query your favorite sites in no time.

To see how this works, try highlighting any of the following code snippets, and dragging them into your browser’s bookmarks bar , or create a new bookmark using any of the following snippets as the URL.

Make sure to copy the entire text string . The easiest way to do this is to triple click on any fragment:

Amazon Search:

data:text/html,    
 YouTube Search: 
 
data:text/html,   
 
 Wikipedia search: 
 
data:text /html,    
 Yelp Search: 
 
data:text/html,    
Spotify Search: 
 
data:text/html,    
Google Maps Search : 
  data:text/html,    
  Google directions (assuming you Home location set): 
 
data :text/html,   
 
 Reelgood Search (used to determine where to stream a movie or show): 
 
data:text/html,    
 Rotten Tomatoes Search:
 
data:text/html,    
 Brave Search :
 
data:text/html,    
 After bookmarking and giving it a name, click it to bring up the search box . Type in what you're looking for and you'll be taken directly to the results page on the appropriate website.  
 
 )
 
 Jared Newman/Foundry 
 
 
Create your own search shortcut
 
Want to quickly search for sites not listed above? There are a few steps involved, but it's quick and very easy. To create your own site-specific search bookmarks, first perform a search on the site you want to add, then copy everything from the address bar to the actual search term.  
 
 For example, suppose we are creating a bookmark for the private search engine DuckDuckGo. After performing a search in DuckDuckGo, copy the following from the address bar and paste it into a text editor such as Notepad: 
 

https://duckduckgo.com/?q= 
 Please note that the above text contains a "?" in it. Replace any question marks in the search address with "%3F". Using our DuckDuckGo example, you would have the following: 
https://duckduckgo.  com/%3Fq= 
 Next copy the code snippet below and paste the respective In a text editor: 
 
data:text/html,    
 Now, replace "SearchAddressGoesHere" with the search URL you set above . Replace "Name your search here" with the text you want to see in the popup.  
 
 Going back to your DuckDuckGo example, your final code will look like this: 
 
data:text/html,    
 Finally, create a new bookmark in your web browser, and Paste the modified code into the address or URL field. Give the bookmark an easy-to-remember name, make it appear in your bookmarks bar, and you're done.  
 
Add a search shortcut to your browser 
 
 As an alternative to using bookmarks, most modern browsers already have site-specific searches built in, using the exact same URL formatting trick I described above. You just create memorable keywords to perform these searches and your browser handles the rest.  
 
 In fact, your web browser probably already does most of the work for you. If you're using Google Chrome, go to 
 Settings> Search Engines> Manage Search Engines and Site Searches 


.   
 From there, look under "Inactive Shortcuts" and you'll see a list of all the sites you entered in the search box. To create a shortcut to search directly on these sites, just click the "Activate" button.  







 Jared Newman/Foundry
 
 For example, in the image above, I have previously searched the web using the private search engine Brave. So Chrome shows a handy "Activate" button for searching with text shortcuts on Brave.  
 To finish setting up the shortcut, click the pencil icon next to the website you're on just activated, and change the "Shortcut" field to something memorable.  





 Jared Newman/Foundry
 
 In the picture above, I set up a shortcut "bs" for Brave Search. Now, I can type "bs" into Chrome's address bar, followed by a search term, and it searches Brave, not Google. You can set up similar shortcuts for almost any site with search capabilities, including Amazon, YouTube, Spotify, and Wikipedia.  
 Personally, I still prefer using bookmarks because it saves me having to remember any specific search syntax. However, if you prefer to navigate using keyboard shortcuts, you may prefer to add a site search shortcut to your browser.  
 Setting up search shortcuts admittedly requires a few minutes upfront time commitment, but you'll quickly earn time as you search for your favorite sites in a more efficient manner return.  
 Weekly in your Get tech tips in your inbox, a version of this column originally appeared in this briefing.