I was jealous today when Joost de Valk released an OpenSearch plugin that enables you to turn off personalized results on a per query basis right from your toolbar.

It is Friday at 6pm here and things cleared off my plate. I have a search toolbar plugin for Safari (not the beta) and I thought I play with it to get the same thing working here. And I did, plus I did a lot more.

(1) First download Inquisitor at http://www.inquisitorx.com/safari/, trust me, it is a time saver.

(2) Next, go to your preference under the Safari menu.

(3) Then click on the Search icon at the top right of that context menu.

inquisitor

(4) Then click on “edit sites” and you should see this:

inquisitor

(5) Click on the plus sign and you will see more options. First add the other search engines you want. Wait a second, your favorite search engine isn’t there.

(6) To add a custom search engine, just click on the “New custom search shortcut…” option.

(7) Then double click on the Site Name area and enter in Ask.com.

(8) Then double click in the URL and enter in “http://www.ask.com/web?q=%@” (note the %@ is your search query.

(9) Then click done.

What if I want to add custom search engines, like to search this blog? No worries! Just add this string “http://www.cartoonbarry.com/search.html?cx=002396771074467716933%3Aj9829rsyocs&q=%@&sa=Search&cof=FORID%3A11”

What about the Search Engine Roundtable, sure add this http://www.seroundtable.com/searchinternal.html?cx=002396771074467716933%3A9winkv77liu&q=%@&sa=Search&cof=FORID%3A9

Ok, wait a second, what if a site doesn’t have a Google Custom Search Engine like Search Engine Roundtable and Cartoon Barry has? Oh, you mean Search Engine Land? And you want to search Google but restrict it to Search Engine Land? No worries, use this string http://www.google.com/search?q=site:searchengineland.com+%@

You can do this for any engine. The trick is to do a query at the engine and simply replace your search phrase with %@.

What does it look like?

You type your query in the search box and click the arrow down and you should see this:

inquisitor

I am glad I added these, will save me some time through the rest of my searching career.

Website Comments

  1. No Name
    Reply

    Thanks so much for great tips and the step by step instructions and illustrations/images on enhancing improving customizing Inquisitor!!!! This is a great resource for understanding how to make inquisitor customized and better than it is (which is great).

    I had also suggested to the developer that if he could add the best features of Acid Search (AcidSearch ?) that it would be even better. Acidsearch unfortunately really slows down safari in a MAJOR unacceptable way, so I had given up until finding inquisitor and your instructions — so THANKS!!!

    One thing I used ALOT on AcidSearch was the “search this site” feature using google’s search engine.

    It was an extremely useful, fast handy shortcut which Inquisitor could benefit from I believe.

    Meanwhile, I am trying to figure out how I might be able to shortcut that into Inquisitor, but I am not a programmer at all so if you have any thoughts about how to do that before Dave W adds it to Inquisitor, I would really love to see/read how you do it.

    thanks again & cheers!

  7. Anon
    Reply

    Please remove text justification on your posts =) Not being nasty, you have good posts — but they’d be so much more readable without the full justify.

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