Daily Tips & Tricks for Web Enthusiasts

Supercharge Your Web Browser’s Built-In Search

You’re really going to love this one.

  1. Open your web browser’s preferences.
  2. Change your default search engine to DuckDuckGo.
  3. Enjoy incredibly versatile search right from your browser’s address/search field by using DuckDuckGo’s bangs.

What the heck is a DuckDuckGo bang, you ask? It’s a bit of text you add to your search that makes magic happen. Let me explain!

If you’ve followed the steps above, and DuckDuckGo is now your default search engine, you can easily search the web for pants by typing the following into your address/search bar:

pants

That would take you to the normal DuckDuckGo search for pants.

But what if you wanted to search Amazon for pants instead? Just type this:

pants !a

That !a at the end is a DuckDuckGo bang, and including it in your search will take you directly to a search for pants on Amazon’s site!

To be clear, this will not show you results from Amazon on DuckDuckGo, or inside a DuckDuckGo wrapper, or any other nonsense. No, this will take you directly to Amazon’s site and search for pants there, directly from your browser’s address/search bar, all in a single step.

Cool, right? There’s more!

Maybe now it’s time to check eBay for pants:

pants !e

Want to learn more about pants in general on Wikipedia?

pants !w

Are the DuckDuckGo search results not sufficient to quench your thirst for pants knowledge? Try Google instead:

pants !g

Or maybe you want to see some images of pants from Google Images?

pants !gi

Wondering what people on Twitter are saying about pants?

pants !tw

The list goes on. There are currently almost 10,000 bangs to choose from, all easily searchable, so finding and memorizing your favorites is a piece of cake.

And, as icing on said cake, DuckDuckGo is a great search engine that respects your privacy and doesn’t track you.

Your web browser’s built in search just got better by an order of magnitude. Enjoy!