Browsers such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox provides a window to the World Wide Web and are increasingly playing a bigger part in the overall search experience. So much so that Google, the king of search has launched its very own browser to get in on the action and control our window to the Internet.
You may know that tinkering with your browser can help protect your privacy and often improves your overall web experience, but you way not know that you can also customise your browser in various ways to improve your web search productivity. Here are some basic hacks/tips for you to try out!
- Search Toolbars
This one is an easy one and one many people knows about. All the popular (and many non-popular!) search engines provide search toolbars that offers shortcuts and features that make you a more powerful searcher. Search Toolbars typically provides short-cuts and quick access to things such as previously searched keywords and advanced search options right from the toolbar as you conduct your search. One of my favourite feature and a real time saver is being able to highlight your search keyword terms on the page you are viewing (so that you don’t have to use the browser’s “Find” functionality) and is one feature that many people are not aware of but a huge productivity booster.
Check out my previous blog on 3 reasons why search toolbar make you a better searcher to learn how to do this using Google toolbar along with other cool tricks!
- Manage the Default Search Engine
Did you know that you can change the default search engines used when you run web search directly from the search box within the browser? Further more, you can add more specialised search engines (such as YouTube or Twitter Search) and interchange them as you conduct your search from the browser search box depending what you are trying to find at the time. When you come across your new favourite search engine, why not switch over your default search engine and see what new results you get!
Amit from Digital Inspiration has a great write up on how to change and edit the default search engine when using Firefox.
- Search Related Browser Plugins
Here is where things get really interesting and the advanced users really power up their search productivity. Using Browser plugins you can really customise your search experience any way you want it particularly if you are using the Firefox browser.
Want to customise your Google search results page by including results from other search engines on the same page? The CustomizeGoogle Firefox plugin can do this and much more! Want a preview screen shots of the websites alongside your Google search results? The GooglePreview plugin does exactly that! One specialist search related plugin that I find incredibly useful and you might enjoy as well if you are a movie buff and a fan of Rotten Tomatoes is the Movie Rating Firefox plugin. It allows you to highlight a movie title directly from within a web page and trigger a search on Rotten Tomatoes that not only returns the movie rating but also a brief description of what the movie is about, a real time saver when you want to do some research on a particular movie!
Embrace the browser, learn more about the browser and you will find that it really can be a powerful platform from which to power up your search productivity!
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