Smart Keyword Searches for Learners

A finely crafted search query is a beau­ti­ful, some­times painfully beau­ti­ful, thing. The offi­cial Google Advanced Search Oper­a­tors offers the promise of unearthing riches from the deep recesses of the Inter­net as long as you can edit (and remem­ber) the search string to meet your spe­cific needs. Ser­vices like G2P and Find Music offer a con­ve­nient inter­face with finely tuned Google search strings for search­ing for mp3 and e-book files. But you must visit their site first, and can­not refine the query. Mozilla and Fire­fox offer another solu­tion: the smart key­word search solu­tion, which lets you per­son­al­ize and pass search queries directly in your browser’s loca­tion bar. This arti­cle explains how to use them to save and reuse com­plex search queries.

Down­load: smart key­word search book­marks
Updated: Feb­ru­ary 22nd, 2008
Size: 10.02 KB

This ver­sion has ten smart key­word searches:

• TeachMe Google Search: Search for syl­labi and courses offered by edu sites with Google by typ­ing “teachme <search terms>” in the loca­tion bar.
• Arti­cle Archives Google Search: Search for arti­cles in the New York Times, Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can and The Globe & Mail with Google by typ­ing “nyt <search term>”, “econ <search term>”, or “gm <search term>”, respec­tively, in the loca­tion bar. Search query source: Google Hacks: 100 Indus­trial Strength Tips & Tools
• Infor­ma­tion Col­lec­tions Google Search: Search direc­to­ries, ency­clo­pe­dias and sub­ject indices with Google by typ­ing “dir <search term>”, “enc <search term>”, or “sub <search term>”, respec­tively in the loca­tion bar. Search query source: Google Hacks: 100 Indus­trial Strength Tips & Tools
• Media Google Search: Search for books, music and videos with Google using “book <search term>”, “music <search term>”, and “video <search term>”, respec­tively, in the loca­tion bar. Search query source: Marc and Angel

Using Key­word Searches 101

In Fire­fox and Mozilla Suite you can spec­ify key­words for book­marks by fill­ing in the key­words field in the Book­marks Prop­er­ties. When you type the key­word into the Loca­tion Bar and hit [Enter], the key­word will be replaced with the book­marked URL. Try this: Press Ctrl+L to key up to the loca­tion bar, type “dict pied-a-terre” (with­out the quo­ta­tion marks) and hit [Enter], which brings you to http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pied-a-terre. By default, Fire­fox comes with sev­eral book­marks with key­words defined, includ­ing dict.

Even bet­ter, if you add a %s at some place in your book­marks URL, it will be replaced by the words you type in after the key­word. Known quick­searches or “smart key­word searches,” they offer a way to search the web with the fewest key­strokes pos­si­ble. I rec­om­mend Life­hack­ers Fif­teen Fire­fox Quick Searches for more pre-packaged search con­ve­nience. Now, finally, let’s takes this one step fur­ther by incor­po­rat­ing Google’s advanced search oper­a­tors into your own cus­tomized smart key­word searches.

You can set up smart key­word searches man­u­ally, or sim­ply import my smart key­word search book­marks.

Man­ual Set-Up

1. Do an advanced search on Google. Exper­i­ment and refine until you have finely honed results! E.g. If you want to learn the French lan­guage, you might try this, which will retrieve French course and syl­labi from *.edu sites:

   -intitle:(~tutorial|~syllabus|~guide|~course) site:.edu "French"

2. Book­mark the results page. E.g.,

   http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=-intitle%3A%28%7Etutorial%7C%7Esyllabus%7C%7Eguide%7C%7Ecourse%29+site%3A.edu+%22French%22&btnG=Search

3. In your book­marks URL (the Loca­tion field), find and replace your search term with %s. I also like to trim the URL to just the essen­tial search para­me­ters, delet­ing for exam­ple the num­ber of search results (num=100). E.g.,

   http://www.google.com/search?q=-intitle%3A(%7Etutorial%7C%7Esyllabus%7C%7Eguide%7C%7Ecourse)+site%3A.edu+%22%s%22

4. Open the Prop­er­ties dia­log for your new book­mark. Add a key­word, e.g., teachme
5. Press OK.

You now have a smart key­word search that can be invoked with teachme. Alter­na­tively, steps 3 – 5 can alter­nately be done in the Book­marks Man­ager, the Book­marks Side­bar, or using the Fire­fox Open Book add-on. To use, type “teachme <search terms>” in your Fire­fox loca­tion bar to search for syl­labi and courses offered by edu sites in your area of inter­est with Google.

The finesse in key­word searches lies in desig­ing the search query, of course. All search engines require dif­fer­ent syn­tax, so it is best to con­cen­trate on two or three, and learn them well. If you choose Google, then the superb Google Guide explains and gives exam­ples of all advanced search oper­a­tors and the Google Cheat Sheet comes in handy.

Import Smart Key­word Search Bookmarks

I’ve made my smart key­word search book­marks avail­able to down­load. Even though I exclu­sively use Google search queries, any search engine can be used. To import the bookmarks:

1. Right-click on the quick search book­marks file and choose “Save Link As…” Place the file some­where on your computer.
2. In Fire­fox, from the Book­marks menu, choose “Orga­nize Bookmarks.”
3. From the Book­marks Man­ager File menu, choose Import. Choose “Import Book­marks from File.” Browse to and open the file you just saved.

The smart key­word searches now should be imported and ready to use.

Inci­den­tally, the orig­i­nal doc­u­men­ta­tion for Fire­fox Smart Key­words seems to be offline, but is still avail­able via the Inter­net Archive: Book­mark Key­words.