
DuckDuckGo's bang - tmlee
https://duckduckgo.com/bang
======
glaberficken
I much prefer that the browser fulfills this role instead of the search
engine.

Like in chrome you can start typing "yt" [Tab] and search youtube

Or in Firefox you can setup keywords and do "yt" [space] and search.

~~~
aquova
I've recently switched from Vivaldi back to Firefox, and I'm unfortunately
finding this somewhat lacking. In Vivaldi you are able to set the URL for any
custom search you wish (for example, a Google search would be setup via
[https://www.google.com/search?q=%s](https://www.google.com/search?q=%s)),
however in Firefox this seems to rely entirely on whether or not there exists
a plug-in to provide this function. Just yesterday I wanted to setup a Wolfram
Alpha search in this manner, only to find out that it wasn't possible due to
the Wolfram search bar plug-in being out of date. For many search shortcuts
like this I've been forced to rely on DDG's bangs.

~~~
wolfgang42
Firefox lets you set up search shortcuts for any keyword, but the feature
isn't very discoverable. (I just found out about it last week.) You right-
click on the search field and select "Add a keyword for this search". Then
when you do a search you just put your keyword before the search term, like
"yt cat vs cucumber" to search YouTube.

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-
address...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address-bar)

~~~
contravariant
This can also be done manually by going through the bookmark menu
(Ctrl+Shift+B) and adding a keyword. Using this keyword then replaces the
phrase "%s" in the URL with the search string.

You can e.g. create a bookmark to
'[https://whereisscihub.now.sh/go/%s'](https://whereisscihub.now.sh/go/%s')
with the keyword 'sci' to search for articles or urls on scihub.

------
have_faith
I find bangs lacking from a UX perspective. It's not that I struggle to use
them, like most of you I'm used to the terminal and text-based interfaces, but
it just seems like a bad form of feature discovery for non-technically
literate people.

It would be nice if this sort of domain filtering could be done with the UI
instead of relying on the bang itself (by all means leave it in for power
users). You could just check a checkbox and a separate text box would appear
for typing in the domain you want to filter on.

~~~
leereeves
I like bangs because they can be used from the address bar of any browser.
That couldn't be done with checkboxes.

~~~
have_faith
It's a good point. But I don't suggest removing them as I mentioned they are
great for power users. I just think the functionality could be extended to
users who are not used to text based interfaces like we are.

~~~
wodenokoto
Like the Firefox search bar?
[https://media.askvg.com/articles/images5/Mozilla_Firefox_New...](https://media.askvg.com/articles/images5/Mozilla_Firefox_New_Search_UI.png)

------
zumzumzum
I am a long time DDG user, going on 4 years? I am just now starting to revert
back to google more and more as I start to find their results lacking. The
main problem I have with bangs is that my mental mode for searching is always
going directly to the search string first. The friction of having to back out
of that and insert a bang is too much. I would love to be able to add the bang
at the end, as it is often then that I realize a particular search string
would be better suited for google or some other service (but mostly google).
I'll send them that suggestion.

~~~
0942v8653
I've been adding the bang at the end of the string for years, and you can even
add it in the middle:

    
    
        hacker news !g
        hacker news!g
        hacker !g news
        hacker!g news
    

all work.

~~~
13of40
I must be too dumb to use this feature, because everything I enter, including
the examples from the page, gives me "No Results Found". (Seems like it works
from the main page, though.)

~~~
boomboomsubban
The page linked here is a searchable list of what bangs exist, like !hn for
hackernews.

------
dmortin
The problem with ! is that it's a shifted character, so it's not a good choice
for something which you use many times a day. An unshifted character would be
better. E.g. comma: ,w for wikipedia

~~~
stochastic_monk
It would be more efficient. If it was vim or emacs, you could rebind. I think
it should be easy enough for ddg to make the special character customizable as
set by a cookie.

------
keeganjw
Privacy is cool and all but this is the main reason I use DDG. I use the !
constantly. It makes search so much faster and enjoyable. I can go straight to
what I want.

~~~
wafflesraccoon
Hard agree, I just feel faster using DDG. Every once in a while I need to
throw a !g to find what I want and that isn't a huge deal breaker for me. For
90% of searches it works great.

~~~
Timpy
Do you guys program? Google is like a brain extension, I'm worried DDG
wouldn't give me the same results, and it would hurt my work flow.

~~~
keeganjw
You got !g for google, !gi for images, !gm for maps, !gt for translate, !gn
for news, !gv or !yt for video, heck even !gf for flights. It helps you go
straight to what you want.

------
PACordonnier
I switched back to google after more than a year using duckduckgo, the results
were just not as good as Google.

However I'm still using the !bangs which are just an awesome feature, I higly
recommend using [http://www.duckduckgoog.com/](http://www.duckduckgoog.com/)
which provides bangs on top of google search.

------
liminal
I recently switched to DDG and while the results sometimes aren't as good as
Google, the feeling of not worrying what my searches will do to my filter
bubble is priceless. I realize I'm still tracked and profiled in a million
other ways, but any improvement is welcome. The bangs are a nice touch, but
much less important to me.

------
Gitnumb
This idea was tried 15 yrs ago or so.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20040612211249/http://www.osx.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/20040612211249/http://www.osx.com/)

------
jaredcwhite
This is a great presentation of the feature and a good directory to learn more
about the bangs available. I use them all the time, usually regarding
programming topics (language reference, GitHub, etc.), but now I see there are
many more I could start using. !astock for Adobe Stock is just one example.
Great feature! (I have DDG as my default in Safari so searching and using
bangs is a breeze.)

------
vonzeppelin
I find myself using !g, !a, !w, and !mw the most. I like that I can go
directly to these services instead of a search page.

------
melonbar
Such a fantastic feature. I can even search through Unity's docs, right from
my search bar. Sure, DDG can be a little behind with search, but the bang
feature more than makes up for it IMHO. I probably use DDG for ~80% of
searches and it gets the job done. It is a small price to pay for peace of
mind. Keep up the good work!

------
mcgwiz
Interesting but probably not very useful.

Major public websites invest heavily in SEO. So practically speaking, what the
user actually wants can often be better surfaced with Google (which draws upon
a great number of signals) than with on-site search (which could merely be
backed by elasticsearch or by a relatively simple homegrown system).

------
makecheck
I use DDG kind of in the same way that I use multiple web browsers, where I
_prefer_ everything locked down in Firefox but occasionally sites won’t work
very well unless I switch to Safari without add-ons running. Sometimes you
just need Google results.

Also, DDG+g! is a great way to get de-AMPed Google results on mobile.

------
jaden
Several years ago I built [https://shortmarks.com](https://shortmarks.com) as
a way to use search shortcuts from any browser. The code isn't pretty and I
haven't updated it in eons, but it works well enough.

------
thrifter
Here's my collection of favorite DDG bangs:
[http://duckgobang.com](http://duckgobang.com). It's my way of getting people
off the Google habit and to try bangs instead.

------
krylon
It took me some conscious effort, but I finally managed to train myself to
make DuckDuckGo my default search engine.

I was vaguely aware of bangs, but I had not known how many other search
engines it can tap into, this is really cool.

------
dang
A discussion from 2016:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11772034](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11772034)

------
shpx
Go to chrome://settings/searchEngines, click to add a custom search engine and
add search engines with short keywords. For example you can add
"[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s"](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s")
with the keyword "y", then if you type "y whatever" in the omnibar it will
search "whatever" on youtube. The big draw back is that you won't get search
suggestions when using a keyword.

Here are my most used custom search engines:

w
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s)
search wikipedia using wikipedia's search engine

ww
[https://www.google.com/search?&q=site%3Awikipedia.org+%s&btn...](https://www.google.com/search?&q=site%3Awikipedia.org+%s&btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky)
search wikipedia through google and open the first result

h
[https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+%...](https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+%s)
results only from hacker news

r
[https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Areddit.com+%s](https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Areddit.com+%s)
only search results from reddit

y
[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s)
youtube

b
[http://93.174.95.27/search.php?req=%s](http://93.174.95.27/search.php?req=%s)
search for books on libgen

m [https://www.google.ca/maps/search/%s](https://www.google.ca/maps/search/%s)
google maps

wo
[https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%s](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%s)
wolfram alpha

ima
[https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=%s](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=%s)
google image search (I tried using "i" and "im", but those are often part of
my query)

s
[https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Astackoverflow.com+%s](https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Astackoverflow.com+%s)
search stack overflow through google

st
[https://stackexchange.com/search?q=%s](https://stackexchange.com/search?q=%s)
search all stack exchange sites through their search engine

~~~
shdh
defaults vs tedious setup

