DuckDuckGo Bang Search

[bdbecker]

On Google, if you want to search for GJ threads related to Makita, you'd enter "site:garagejournal.com makita". DuckDuckGo has a similar feature called Bang Search that uses an exclamation point and then a site code followed by a keyword. To search Amazon for a socket set, you'd enter "!a socket set", the "!a" being the bang code for Amazon. If you wanted to do the same search for eBay, you'd enter "!ebay socket set".

https://duckduckgo.com/bang

There seem to be a number of forums that have bang searches setup for them and I was thinking it might be neat to setup one for Garage Journal. A few things though...

First, would this even be allowed? I wouldn't want to set something up that could compromise the forum just because I want to search for topics quickly without using Google.

Second, what would we want the GJ bang code to be? !gj is already taken for Google Japan. Some options that are available are !garage, !gajo, !garjo, !gjournal. The shorter the better - the whole idea behind bangs is that they are shortcuts.

Third, some of the forum bang codes do a full search of all threads. I'd think if we wanted to set this up, we'd want to search thread titles only otherwise it could cause a lot of useless results to come back. This is a problem for the !FordSix bang code. If you try to search something like "exhaust" any post that has the word "exhaust" in it comes back, so you get nearly 25k results, in no particular order.

Finally, I do not know how to set this up. I'm sure if I dug around for a few hours I could sort it out, but someone who knows a lot more about coding and how this site runs could probably take care of it in a few minutes.

https://duckduckgo.com/newbang

Just an idea.

 

[Dumber than lumber]

!hiswife
Just any idea... (or did you trap me with that?)

 

[bdbecker]

!hiswife
Just any idea... (or did you trap me with that?)

Lol... you got me with that one. I'm not sure if DDG would approve that, but it might be worth a shot.

 

[pizza]

First, would this even be allowed? I wouldn't want to set something up that could compromise the forum just because I want to search for topics quickly without using Google.

allowed? wtf man, grow a pair.

anyway, a bang on DDG basically just redirects you to an external site's search function directly. this is in contrast to using the "site:example.com blah blah" syntax in google search, which is using google as a search engine but restricting scope to a domain of your choice.

instead of relying on a site like DDG to redirect you to other sites' search tools, you can achieve the same thing using your web browser by adding search shortcuts. this has at least a couple of advantages. one, you're not transmitting your search queries unnecessarily to DDG. two, if DDG experiences an outage, you're not dependent on them. three, you can create your own personal/private custom searches, and you don't need or necessarily want something like DDG to curate those for you. what if it's not applicable to other people, or what if DDG doesn't approve your submitted bang? just manage your own search shortcuts directly in your browser. i have dozens of them set up.

which browser do you use? i can help you get it set up.

for firefox, you can look at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/assign-shortcuts-search-engines

you could type something like "@gj stiletto hammer" in the address bar, and it will search garagejournal for that.

for chrome: https://www.ghacks.net/2018/03/30/custom-search-engines-in-google-chrome/

lmk if you need help getting it going

 

[Dumber than lumber]

allowed? wtf man, grow a pair.

a....
....
lmk if you need help getting it going

Dear Pizza
“Grow a pair”? Seriously?
Well I guess I don’t know what you are saying there. We are mostly just a bunch of guys saying stuff that is appropriately inappropriate around here. At least from what I see most days.
Don’t mean disrespect.

 

[pizza]

apologies, but apparently the blessed way to do it in firefox is to create a bookmark and then assign a keyword to it. the keyword is then the shortcut you type in the address bar.

and if you were having trouble figuring out the search url for gj, here it is:

https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/search.php?do=process&query=%s

%s is the search query

hope that helps, and feel free to ask if you aren't getting it

 

[bdbecker]

allowed? wtf man, grow a pair.

Easy now... I'm asking an honest question. When it comes to computers and programming, I know enough to know that I don't know much. I'd hate to be the jackass who sets up something that ends up crashing the site.

The reason for wanting to setup up a bang search is so that others could use the feature besides me.

I'm running Firefox. Reading through your link, I fail to see how I could use Garage Journal as a search engine to setup your "@gj" search shortcut.

EDIT:
I'll try using that link the second post.

 

[pizza]

Dear Pizza
“Grow a pair”? Seriously?
Well I guess I don’t know what you are saying there. We are mostly just a bunch of guys saying stuff that is appropriately inappropriate around here. At least from what I see most days.
Don’t mean disrespect.

thanks for your insight

 

[pizza]

hey bdbecker,

firefox. got it.

so put in that search link i shared a couple of posts back. should look something like this in firefox's bookmark manager.

then you can type "gj stiletto hammer" or whatever in your address bar, and it should work. good luck!

i'll also share this link in case it's helpful.
https://forum.vbulletin.com/forum/v...110659-how-to-submit-a-search-through-the-url

on that page, there's insight about how to change the search in case you want to show the results as posts instead of threads or something like that.

 

[dwysywd]

Interesting. I use DDG. Pizza, the intent of DDG is that they don’t track your usage...so they say. Unlike Google where they are blatantly obvious about your SE forays. As for !hiswife, that’s some funny [emoji90].

I like this idea. I use 5 different browsers over 5 different computers. So I like the idea of using a bang search cause I don’t have the patience to set up the saved search on all of the computers. Just my thought.


Sent from my iPhone using my facsimile machine.

 

[ddawg16]

I use DDG.....my searches are void of 'bias'.....

The 'bang' search is new to me...time to research it.

 

[pizza]

i forgot to say this before, but fwiw, i feel that searching gj using google gives a superior experience. i don't even use gj's built-in search.

and i'm with you that google has many problems (especially ideological and political in nature), but ignoring censorship issues, search isn't one of them. i like DDG's ideology, but i don't think it gives me as good of a search experience. it's far inferior to google, sadly.

example:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site:garagejournal.com+stiletto+hammer
vs
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:garagejournal.com+stiletto+hammer

I use DDG.....my searches are void of 'bias'.....

The 'bang' search is new to me...time to research it.

if you're talking about search personalization bias, my solution to this issue is to not use google search from a browser profile with a google account. i also reset the environment daily and start fresh. if i have to log into a google account, that google product gets compartmentalized in its own temporary browser environment.

 

[pizza]

Interesting. I use DDG. Pizza, the intent of DDG is that they don’t track your usage...so they say. Unlike Google where they are blatantly obvious about your SE forays. As for !hiswife, that’s some funny [emoji90].

I like this idea. I use 5 different browsers over 5 different computers. So I like the idea of using a bang search cause I don’t have the patience to set up the saved search on all of the computers. Just my thought.

i trust DDG more than google, but i would still prefer to not use bangs. i'd rather use built-in browser functionality. if DDG is not even providing me with search results (but instead redirecting me to an external search tool of my choice), then i feel that my searches are frankly none of their business. no reason to share those particular searches with them.

also, i have dozens of specialized searches that are either private or just probably not relevant to most people. here's one to check currency exchange rates on visa (accepts uppercase currency code as input):

https://usa.visa.com/support/consum...html?amount=10&fee=0.0&fromCurr=USD&toCurr=%s

and i hear you on the pains of customizing multiple computers with your settings. but if i use a computer for any length of time, i can't deal without customization because it brings a lot of added utility. there are various strategies to sync configs across machines that help alleviate this..

 

[PelicanPines]

A whole new reason to run around Banging things.

Thanks for the info. It's been decades since I used DDG... I prefer Google... May get in the habit of using "site:"

Gonna make a cheat sheet on their other shortcuts...

 

[bdbecker]

Got it working - thanks for the help Pizza. That keyword feature is pretty sweet. I've setup a second one to take me directly to my subscribed threads list, which is where I usually look first when I get on GJ.

If anyone else is interested, here is the link to setup a search using titles only:
https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/search.php?do=process&query=%s&titleonly=1

-----

I've been using DDG for the last ~5 months and have been generally pretty happy with it, but I don't think I can cut Google out completely. It does take a little getting used to and there are times when it flat out doesn't work. I can't remember exactly what website I was looking for recently, but DDG just could not find it even when I typed in the company name. Google found it immediately. Overall, I'm still keeping it as my default search engine because it does work most of the time, and I've found that it generally works better than Google when researching technical information. The privacy aspect is also nice. While I don't have anything to hide, its good to keep the bastards guessing.

 

[pizza]

I've found that it generally works better than Google when researching technical information.

Interesting. Do you have example query

 

[bdbecker]

Interesting. Do you have example query

Where it really shines is when I'm looking for welding related stuff for work. The company I work for has a bit of a niche market in that we are the ones that get called when there is some wonky project that our customers don't want to deal with themselves. Working as an engineer in the weld area, the task often falls to me to do a deep dive for any information we can use to give guidance to the guys on the floor. I'm usually on the hunt for whitepapers, technical articles, academic research and reports, etc. DDG search results tend to match my keywords. Google tends to push results to sites that are popular, but may not contain the information I'm looking for.

One example from last week - I was trying to sort out the impact mid-frequency DC inverters have on resistance weld schedules. Google gave me page after page of sites where MFDC inverters were mentioned (mostly companies selling them), but very little technical information that answered the questions I had. Using DDG, I was able to find a number of research papers that covered exactly what I was looking for.

Nothing wrong with how Google's algorithm works. It obviously works well for the vast majority of people given that they basically own the market. However, when I need to dig into the obscure, I tend to have much better luck with DDG.

 

[LS2Swapped92]

I stopped using google completely, DDG still has it's flaws and it's censored too, but at least they don't track you. Yandex works pretty well for image searches

This is a neat feature though