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Firefox Tricks: Quick Searches for Maps, News, and Blog Search Engines
October 19, 2005
A few weeks ago, I wrote about some Firefox search tricks - how to turn your Firefox browser's address field into a search box for Yahoo, MSN, and Google. This post gives data for several more quick searches, focusing on news, blog search, and maps.
For the background of the Firefox Quick Search and instructions about how to create a Quick Search bookmark, see my previous post. If you're ready to add more quick searches, following are several good ones. Note that in each case, you must use a keyword, but the keyword you use is your choice. Just make sure it's intuitive for you, so that you'll instinctively use it and won't have to waste time trying to remember what it is.
In the following examples, I also added the Sample query line to show how an example query will look when you're done. You do not need to input this data anywhere.
Technorati (Blog Search):
Name: Technorati Blog Search
Location: http://www.technorati.com/search/%s
Keyword: tblog
Sample query: tblog supreme court
Technorati (Tag Search):
Name: Technorati Tag Search
Location: http://www.technorati.com/search/tag/%s
Keyword: ttag
Sample query: ttag supreme court
Google Blog Search:
Name: Google Blog Search
Location: http://www.google.com/blogsearch?q=%s
Keyword: gblog
Sample query: gblog supreme court
Yahoo Blog Search:
Name: Yahoo Blog Search
Location: http://blog.news.search.yahoo.com/blog/search?p=%s
Keyword: yblog
Sample query: yblog supreme court
Google Maps/Local:
Name: Google Maps Search
Location: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=%s
Keyword: gmaps
Sample query: gmaps iowa city ia
Sample query: gmaps restaurants near lax
Note that all of the typical Google Local search queries work here.
Google News:
Name: Google News Search
Location: http://news.google.com/news?q=%s
Keyword: gnews
Sample query: gnews hurricane wilma
Yahoo News:
Name: Yahoo News Search
Location: http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/search?p=%s
Keyword: ynews
Sample query: ynews hurricane wilma
MSN News:
Name: MSN News Search
Location: http://search.msn.com/news/results.aspx?q=%s
Keyword: mnews
Sample query: mnews hurricane wilma
Because of the URL output structure of Yahoo Maps, I couldn't find a universal URL that would work with Firefox Quick Searches. If you can derive one, let me know.
see all posts by Erik Dafforn
posted by Erik Dafforn at October 19, 2005 11:25 PM
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