So til that if you use DuckDuckGo search engine, and you’re not happy with the result and want to run the previous search through Google, instead of copying your search, then heading to Google, then pasting your previous search, you can just add !g to front of your search in DuckDuckGo and that will auto direct you to Google and run that search for you!

For example: !g search term for Google

    • KesharaOPEnglish
      23•1 month ago

      Its amazing, I work in the IT industry, I love exploring different areas of tech, but the concept of bangs in a search engine has never come up haha. I’ve seen not ever really used them in a terminal when forgetting to run a command as sudo

        • KesharaOPEnglish
          5•1 month ago

          I really need to try this out at some point. Just been too lazy to give it a shot

      • andrew_bidlawEnglish
        8•1 month ago

        Firefox also allows to make them for different search fields, e.g. if I write pic and then my querry, it brings me images.google.com results. Kinda nice if bangs don’t cover your usecases.

          • @SirQuack@feddit.nlEnglish
            1•1 month ago

            If you bookmark a URL you can add %s to the URL somewhere to add a query. If you the use a keyword on the bookmark (the bottom field, usually) you can do [keyword] term and it’ll replace the %s with term

        • @SirQuack@feddit.nlEnglish
          1•1 month ago

          The most powerful bang is ! , which is “I’m feeling lucky”. It combines with everything.

          mdn http status ! will show you the http status code list on mdn, GitHub actions docs workflow context ! will lead you right to the correct docs.

  • ArchRecordEnglish
    52•1 month ago

    Bangs are great.

    My favorites are:

    • !w for Wikipedia
    • !d for a Dictionary
    • !t for a Thesaurus
    • !yt for YouTube
    • !archiveweb for the Internet Archive

    and I’ve found it usually works with pretty much any site name you’re thinking of searching (e.g. if you want to look up a movie on IMDB, chances are !imdb will take you there.)

    • TheTechnician27English
      21•1 month ago

      This is just one of multiple bangs for the Internet Archive, and probably more intuitive and quick ones include:

      • !ia for the Internet Archive generally
      • !wbm for the Wayback Machine
      • ArchRecordEnglish
        7•1 month ago

        oh, thanks, that’ll make it way quicker for me to type out!

    • KesharaOPEnglish
      7•1 month ago

      The dictionary bang is 100% something I’ll be using quite often moving forward

    • @SatyrSack@feddit.orgEnglish
      2•1 month ago
      • !ud Urban Dictionary
      • !startrek Star Trek wiki
      • !stargate Stargate wiki
      • !wayback Wayback Machine
      • !tineye Reverse image search
      • !bang Check if there are any DuckDuckGo bangs for a particular site
      • !itad Is There Any Deal?
      • !steam Steam store
      • !sp Startpage

      You can also use a bang itself, with nothing else before or after it, to just go to the homepage for that website. That can be simpler than typing out the whole URL.

  • @TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.caEnglish
    30•1 month ago

    Using DDG to route into Google defeats the point of avoiding Google in the first place.

    Use !sp instead to route your search through Startpage, which is essentially Google without the Google BS.

    • KesharaOPEnglish
      10•1 month ago

      I hear you, but sometimes when I’m working I want 2 things when trying to solve a problem quickly; 1. Accurate results, and 2. Speed and performance.

      So while I do use SP on occasion, I find that sometimes for me it can take a while to load the results and just generally get a bit laggy. This can really start to annoy me over the course of a day, it’s those moments when I just bite the bullet and go to Google directly if DuckDuckGo isn’t giving me what I need

    • @jagged_circle@feddit.nlEnglish
      6•1 month ago

      Only needed for about 2% of my queries. So definitely doesn’t defeat the purpose if 98% of my queries don’t leak out to google.

    • The QuuuuuillEnglish
      5•1 month ago

      it used to be a great way to get google results that weren’t custom. then in 2019 google disabled that api

    • @Kusimulkku@lemm.eeEnglish
      1•1 month ago

      DuckDuckGo is an alright default but sometimes I just need that better, more tailored search from Google.

      Nowadays I often use AI for questions though. It gives better results and a more comfortable way.

  • RentlarEnglish
    7•1 month ago

    That feature to search a multitude of websites via Duck Duck Go was a gamechanger when I found out about it some years ago. I’ve not gone back since.

  • @letsgo@lemm.eeEnglish
    6•1 month ago

    But why would I want a bunch of ads and SEO shit that doesn’t answer my question?

  • FundMECFSEnglish
    4•1 month ago

    Wanna search on “google” without selling your data to google.

    Well just like duckduckgo is basically bing but with trackers removed, startpage https://startpage.com/ is the same for google!

  • CrisEnglish
    4•1 month ago

    Works in brave too!

    I use !gi a lot because brave image search sucks lol

  • @LambdaRX@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    3•1 month ago

    Or use !()startpage for more private search using google’s results. Sadly it’s much more typing.

    Edit: there’s !s bang, it’s as short as !g