Firefox Tip : Create Smart Keywords For Searching Websites Easily

Smart Keywords is a pretty nifty feature of Mozilla Firefox. To understand how useful Smart Keywords are, consider this example. I frequently visit Technorati a lot of times to search for blog posts. Using a Smart Keyword I can search Technorati right from the Firefox address bar without the need to go to Technorati.com.

Creating a Smart Keyword

For creating a smart keyword :

  1. Visit the page that has the search field that you search with.
  2. Then right click on the search field. Choose Add a Keyword for this Search…
  3. The Add Bookmark dialog will appear. Give the bookmark a name, e.g. “Search Technorati” and create a keyword for e.g. “technorati” and save the Bookmark.
  4. Click OK.

Now enter Technorati <yoursearchterm> into the address bar and hit enter. For example if you want to search for “Microsoft” at Technorati.com type Technorati Microsoft and you will see Technorati search results for the term Microsoft.

Repeat the steps above for any website search you want to add. ;)

Quick Tip : To avoid cluttering your bookmarks, create a separate folder in your bookmarks to store these “Smart Keywords”.

7 comments ↓

#1 Pallab on 06.06.07 at 11:00 pm

Opera calls it “Nickname”. The funtionality is exactly the same though.
OpenDNS (www.opendns.com) also allows you to create shortcuts. Using that you can achieve the same thing. The advantage is that opendns is browser independent.

#2 Manas on 06.06.07 at 11:11 pm

I love OpenDNS … Adds a huge level of functionality to my browser’s address bar. ;)

#3 Nirmal on 06.07.07 at 4:22 pm

Nice post, will try it out. BTW stumbled. :-)

#4 Manas on 06.07.07 at 8:14 pm

^^ :)

#5 Ashwin on 06.09.07 at 7:07 pm

I also use one other cool thing in FX. I give letters to my bookmarks. For Gmail, I have given “g”. When I want to visit Gmail, I simply enter g and hit enter. :D

#6 Manas on 06.09.07 at 7:39 pm

Excellent tip :)

#7 Links : Shankar Ganesh | Tech Blog on 06.10.07 at 11:41 am

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