Custom search engines have undoubtedly become one of the most excellent features of any modern browser. With just a few keystrokes, you can search a website of your choice (e.g., TheWindowsClub.com) right from your address bar and carry out a custom Google search for the site’s articles. Here’s how to go about in Windows!
Add favorite Website to Edge or Chrome Custom Search Engine
Assuming you are using the Chrome browser, visit the website you’d like to set up a search shortcut and find the site’s internal search box. For instance, here, I am using The Windows Club. The steps remain the same for most sites with internal search boxes.
Next, right-click inside the site’s internal search box and select Add As Search Engine from the context menu. In our case, you will see it at the top of the right sidebar. A new window should show up in the middle of the screen, requesting you to configure the new custom search engine in seconds. You should leave the URL field alone for most sites, but you can change the Name and Keyword fields.
Name: This is the name of your custom Chrome search engine. It will come up in the address bar every time you initiate your site-specific custom search and will help you identify the desired site if you have multiple custom search engines added. Give it a proper name, as I have – The Windows Club. It is always advisable to stick with the name of the site you’re setting up with a custom search. Keyword: Another important field. Here’s what you type in the Chrome address bar to let the browser know that you’re about to initiate a custom, site-specific search. Keep it short in my case – TWC 2, so that you bypass the requirement of typing out a site’s full name to trigger a search. When done, press OK to save your new site-specific custom search engine. Now, visit the Chrome address bar to test your custom search engine out. Start by first typing the keyword you chose earlier, followed by the Tab key on your keyboard. You should find the cursor jumping to the right, and a new blue box appears that displays the name of the site you configured previously.
Rather than regular Google results, the site you set up will open its internal search page and display any matching results from your query. Thus, you can search any website directly from the Chrome or Edge Address Bar. Cool, isn’t it?
How to manually add a custom search engine?
Search the website you want to add, and once done, look at the URLThere should be a page right after the website name which ends with ?q= or anything similarIn the case of TWC, it is https://www.thewindowsclub.com/the-windows-club-search-results?q=Open Chrome or Edge and go to the section where you can add a search engine.In the URL with %s in place of query, copy past the full URL and add %s in the end.The final URL should look as https://www.thewindowsclub.com/the-windows-club-search-results?q=%s
That’s it. You can add any website like this if you cannot add it with a right-click. That said, a lot depends on how it is implemented. So it will work for most of the cases except a few.
