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New Google Toolbar Brings Browse By Name
Philipp Lenssen writes "The newest release of the Google Toolbar (Internet Explorer only) comes with a Browse by Name feature. It lets you enter keywords in the browser address bar, and when Google decides this is a sure bet you will be directly forwarded to the right page. Is this the return of Internet Keywords?"
http://toolbar.google.com/bbn_help.html for (a little) more info
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I would guess that this is aimed more at your average mom and pop internet users, not /. readers. As such, if they can avoid the whole keyword problem, it will be useful for their target audience. After all, how many readers use IE anyway?
Really? I use Firefox myself.
But I know what you mean - the first time I typed text into the address bar ("2008 Olympics" I think it was) and it automatically took me to the best match (in this case here), I was in awe. Now I use it all the time.
fun with google
I downloaded this thing about a week ago after a format, and without having performed any rigorous testing my impression is that it takes me directly to a page *only* if the URL comprises my search terms. So it's much more selective than "i'm feeling lucky".
To take a (random) example, typing "harman kardon" takes me to harmankardon.com. However, typing "harman kardon amplifiers" takes me to a standard search results page. Same thing with "mazda" vs "mazda trucks".
So IMHO it ends up being a rather benign little time-saver.
Keywords are enabled by default in Firefox but you can easily disable them.
- Type about:config in the URL field
- Look for the keyword.enabled line and double-click it
- Replace "True" with "False"
Et voila !
"Naughty, naughty, naughty, you filthy old soomka !"
Mozilla, or at least Firefox, has done this for a while -- it just goes to Google and grabs the first result (i.e. "I'm feeling lucky"). It's neat and I've used it, but I don't really use it a lot.
Errr, this isn't new per say, except for maybe IE. It's been in the Mozilla Google toolbar for a few months now. I personally find it highly annoying.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
You could actually do this in IE as well by merging the values below into the registry:
e arch?q=%s&btnG=Google+S earch"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl]
"provider"=""
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\g]
@="http://www.google.com/s
" "="+"
"#"="%23"
"&"="%26"
"?"="%3F"
"+"="%2B"
"="="%3D"
I've been using this built-in support in both browsers for years...
You might want to search for "googol" instead, if you mean 10^100 ;)
In a sense, what Google's doing here is taking what used to happen when you typed a non-domain'ed phrase into IE's address bar, a search at your selected search engine, and declaring that if the confidence score is high enough, equating that to an "I'm feeling lucky" click on the Google homepage.
In a sense, if the PageRank of hit #1 is so far away from the PageRank of hit #2... why bother with the selection screen, just assume that the user wants to see #1 and give it to them.
I used to be able to do stuff like "dict reprobate" or "google ultra scsi 320" --- but not now. Why? (firefox)
Back when Real Names was a business, I was working for a Movie Studio. The Real Names folks almost sounded threatening when they told us that we'd better snatch up our names before someone else did! Thankfully we just ignored them.
Best Buy can have you arrested
You don't type it into the Google toolbar. You type it into the address bar. However, as soon as you type a word without an scheme identifier (for example, "www" or "mail" instead of "http://www" or "http://mail"), the Google toolbar intercepts the request and does a "Browse By Name."
RomSteady - I came, I saw, I tested. GamerTag: RomSteady / http://www.romsteady.net
1. Go to your favorite web page (say www.nytimes.com).
2. Bookmark it (CTRL-D)
3. Go to the Bookmarks Manager (CTRL-B)
4. Scroll down to the entry you just added and press CTRL-I to edit it.
5. On the dialog that appears, there's a "Keyword" entry field, enter the "keyword" that you want to use for this web page you have bookmarked (example: nyt).
6. That's it!. Next time you enter "NYT" (unquoted of course) on the url entry field and press [enter] you're taken to www.nytimes.com
7. repeat for every web page that you want to create your personal keyword.
Some other suggestions:
1. Drop Internet Explorer and MS-Lookout! ^R^R^R^R^R^R Outlook.
2. Install Mozilla as your primary browser and e-mail client.
3. set your IE proxy to some non-existant internal IP address (10.x.x.x), on the exceptions list, put the windowsupdate page (makes it impossible for IE to reach out any page on the net, except windowsupdate).
FC
Type in "best browser" and you will get to.. http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
No, it is built into Firefox (or, at least it was - Mozilla Foundation has a funny way of changing horses mid-stream...).
You're talking about quick searches, where you bookmark the search engine and type an appropriate trigger keyword as you save it.
If you type your query into the address bar without any keyword at all, it does an "I'm Feeling Lucky" search on Google by default. You can type about:config and then search for "keyword" to change it to a different engine, if you wish.
Even easier: http://www.google.com/google.reg
Save it and double-click to add it to the registy.
A speech...
You should be able to configure these in the bookmark manager. So you set the location of the bookmark to "http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=%s", and the keyword to "dict", then another bookmark to "http://www.google.com/search?&q=%s", and keyword to "google". I have this set up to do stock ticker lookup, ups/fedex tracking, amazon search, imdb search, and so on. This is by far one of my favorite browser features.
I consider myself pretty damned good at Google search terms, and I'm still amazed how often what I consider really useful is buried a couple of pages down. The top hitters often make sense, but they are simply not what I wanted.
I have no intention of actually running IE to test it out but I assume it's a feature that can be enabled/disabled by the user. If so, making the choice available isn't any big deal. Now, if you can't go back to the default behavior, that's a different story.
All in all, me likes Google. Me wishes me had some pre-IPO shares; would like Google even better then.
- Leo
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
Update: "failure" is enough.
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org
It's not an "Internet Explorer only" thing. Mozilla FireBird has this by default.
I type "slashdot" and I automatically get slashdot.org. I type "slasdot" and I still automatically get slashdot.org. And that's going through google, not my history (assuming my history is cleared).
It is easier now with FireFox. Just right click any form field and choose "Add a keyword for this search...". It automatically creates the bookmark (with %s and all) and assigns the keyword. This method even seems to work with POST searches as well...
Virus infects both Windows and Linux!
[click] [click] [click] [tap] [tap] [tap]
p /2164841) suggested that Google should do something exactly like what they're doing here. I had to double check to make sure the article was dated 2 years ago...
Sure enough, it doesn't work. Once upon a time it did. There was a huge buzz around 2000 when the feature was intruduced, with many tech sites headlining silly things like "Microsoft to end domain names as we know them".
So I decided to do some digging. The keyword search was done through a company called RealNames; the agreement between Microsoft and RealNames ended in mid 2002 because the "quality" of keywords results was getting really crappy (type "mp3" and you go to some crappy obscure company's site that sells something related to mp3s; basically the keyword database RealNames provided was getting really spammy). The default behavior was changed to drop you to a search page for your default search engine, with the arguement being that this probably gives typical users a better experience anyway.
Oddly enough, once of the articles I read (http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.ph