There are even several choices for different search engine apps. Which one you use depends a lot on what features you’re looking for, as well as which one you usually prefer when searching. Most of them are free, as you shouldn’t have to pay for searching, but there’s one that costs just a little. Depending on your usage, it could be worth it.

I’m doing a search here for news about Apple. I tried first using the search tool within the Safari browser in iOS. I have a lot of choices, certainly more than I had with the first Safari browser in the original iOS. Across the top in the black bar, I can search for News, Images, Maps, Shopping, etc… and I can sign in to my Google account for more options. In a list to the right, it shows related searches. If I click on the wrench, it gives me time options, as well as other interesting choices, such as reading level, translation, verbatim, etc. Additionally, in the Settings app, you can choose whether to search with Google, Bing, or Yahoo! There are ample amount of options here.

Google App

The Google App works much the same way as Google in Safari, but it provides you a few more options. If I just go to a regular search, it gives me the same search list, as well as the related searches to the right, and a few to the top. Clicking on the arrow in the upper left takes me to additional options that include a voice search. If you don’t have a newer iPhone or are using an iPad, and don’t have the use of Siri, you can search with voice here. It’s nice for when you’re tied up doing something else, yet you still have to use your eyes to navigate to the right spot here. Additionally, you can check in with the library of other Google apps. When you return to your search, it gives you the additional options you have with Google in Safari. Tapping a search option opens it in a separate tab. Gestures allows you to have the viewing window side by side with your search results.

Bing App

You just can’t get more attractive than the Bing App. The one optimized for the iPad is even more so. It has large images opened up in the middle, and you can swipe to different images if you prefer. You can click on an info icon in the bottom right for more information of what you’re looking at, and can click on certain pieces of the image to get more information about that section of the image. It’s not all about that though. There is also a search for voice option, and an attractive listing at the bottom of local weather, maps, searching trends, news, movies, and finance. Tapping those takes you to more options. And of course, there’s a search function in the top left that gives you standard search options.

Yahoo App

About the only reason to use the Yahoo! App would be if you are used to searching with Yahoo! online and are on your iPhone. It’s not optimized at all for the iPad. It does offer you great local suggestions. If you’re looking for a restaurant, movie, or coffee shop close by, it’ll give you those options on a map. It also shows you the current search trends, allows you to search by voice, and of course offers the same standard search options along the top there.

Ask App

Like Bing, the Ask App isn’t optimized for the iPad, and is only useful if you’re on an iPhone. It offers more choices if you sign up for a free account. The app shows you what is currently being searched for by others using Ask. It can search normally on the web and can also search for answers from people, just like ask.com does. If you look for specific answers, you need to either create an account or sign in with Facebook. It should be noted that if you ask something previously asked, it will show up in a web search, just as with any other search app. If you have many pointed questions you are looking to have answered, it might be useful.

BingYaMaGoggle! App

The BingYaMaGoggle! App combines all of the search functions in one place for you. There are other apps that do the same, but they aren’t as easy to use and as attractive. If you do a lot of searching and hate switching back and forth between search engines looking for the right answer, it’s worth the $1.99 price tag. It searches Bing, Yahoo!, Google, AOL, and Ask.com. At any time you can have it open the choices in Safari. My only question is where they get the “Ma” in the title.

Which is your favorite method to perform a search in iOS?

Image credit: Danard Vincente

By site specific search I mean that you can use a search engine to find content from a specific blog, website or forum. Sometimes you may want to search a popular blog for some tutorial and it’s not always very comfortable to open blogs in different tabs and use their search box to find the content you are looking for.

Instead, you can search any website from Google, Yahoo or Bing. The advantage is that you can filter all the posts that match with specific keywords directly from a search engine.

Perform a Site Specific Search With Google, Yahoo or Bing

The search engines index the content of all websites daily and by using the site operator, you can limit your search within a specific website. The general syntax for the site operator is keyword site: domain.com

For example: performing this site search query shows all the posts from maketecheasier.com which contain the word “Images” in the post title:

Using the same syntax, you can perform a site specific search at Yahoo and Bing as well. For example: This search at Yahoo and this one at Bing shows all the posts that contain the word software in the post title. Let’s take a look at the search results pages now:

Using the At Operator

Google recently introduced an “at” operator which lets you perform the site specific searches more easily. The syntax is keywords at domain.com

This operator shows more results from a specific domain and it’s quite easy to remember as well.

Please note that you can use regular phrases and not just single phrases, when using the site operator or the “at” operator in any of the above search engines.

Using the Advanced Search Options

All the search engines have an “Advanced search” option which you can be used to perform a search within a single or group of domains. Let’s take Google as an example.

Go to the Google homepage and click “Advanced search” placed just right to the Google search box. You will be taken to a new page which looks something like the following:

Enter the name of the site you want to search in the text field “Search within a site or domain” .Then enter the keywords or phrases in the “all these words” text box. You can further exclude some words in the “don’t show pages” text box.

When you are done, hit “Advanced search” and Google will return the results from the specific domain of your choice. The advanced search has an advantage when there are an overwhelming number of results from a specific domain and you want to exclude some keywords from your search (e.g. using Firefox in the main text box and using linux in the excluding text box shows results which contain the word Firefox but not the word Linux.)

The procedure is exactly the same for Yahoo Advanced Search and Bing as well, take a look at the following screenshots:

Search a Specific Site From your Browser – Firefox and Google Chrome

Another neat way to perform a site specific search is to use a browser extension and add a custom search box in Firefox awesome bar. This will allow you to search any website directly, without having to open it and use the internal built in search box. Here are the steps:

1. Install the Add to Search Bar extension and restart Firefox.

2.Go to the website where you would want to perform a custom search often. Right click the search box and choose”"

3. Now click the Firefox Awesome bar and select the custom search engine you just added.

4. Now you can simply type the keywords and hit “Enter” to perform a site specific search using the Firefox’s search box. The extension allows you to add any number of sites, so if you can multiple blogs or websites without any problem.

What methods you use to perform a site specific search? Please let us know your ideas through a comment.

I am sure you have seen a .UK at the end of a website address. That is because of the country specific nature of the site. Google for example, has a bunch of country specific search engines. For example Google.com.au or Google.fr/

Below are some tips to help you narrow down your searches from a global level to a more manageable set of results. The big three make up the bulk of the article, but there is a list of different localized search engines.

Bing

If you use Bing to search, a great option to narrow your search is using an operator to soley search in your region of interest. For example, if you wanted to search for something in Australia, you could add [loc:AU] to the end of your search query. Bing would then only search for results in that country.

Here is a monster list of the country codes. It is from their help archives. I couldn’t find a direct link so click on the country and region codes table for all of the available choices.

Another search trick with Bing is to add a little bit of code to the completed query. Try adding [?cc=fr] to the Bing URL so it would look like this

www.bing.com?cc=fr

Google

Search giant Google lets you search in different countries couple different ways.

The first I mentioned above. Simply add [.AU] or what ever country abbreviation for the country you would like to search.

The other option is to add a little bit of code [&gl=uk] to the end of a completed search. The “gl” is for Google Location. Here is a before and after example

Before:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=volkswagen+dealerships&aq=0&oq=volkswagen+dealers&aqi=g10&esrch=FT1

After:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=volkswagen+dealerships&aq=0&oq=volkswagen+dealers&aqi=g10&esrch=FT1&gl=uk

Yahoo

Yahoo is a little different than the other two. Yahoo offers a country search option in the advance search options.

Yahoo also has a page that directs you to the search engine page for the country of your choice; there are 41 to choose from. Here is a link to the Yahoo International page.

Local Search Engines

The last option I’m going to mention is local search engines. There are a lot of local search engines who will search the local pages. These pages might be business searches in a certain city, or just a local telephone or address search. Having access to these will help you sift through the possibilities and really narrow in your search results. Most larger cities are bound to have a search engine or two like this.

This site has a pretty large list of search engines by country. It does not look like it has been updated in a while, but it will give you somewhere to start.

Do you know any ways to narrow your search to a country or even a city level?

Image credit Si1very

When I am sitting at my desk and trying to focus on work, it is all too easy to lend my attention to something much more interesting than what I should be doing. Going to a search site or looking at the auto suggestions when typing in a bookmark tag can easily steal your attention.

I have recently been trying out a different homepage at work. 43marks isn’t as flashy as some of the homepages out there, but flashy is usually distracting. How 43marks differs from other homepages, is how much it offers in such a simple layout. 43marks combines two things people use on a daily basis: bookmarks and search engines.

Having four options to search at your fingertips without all of the typical distractions and random links associated with some sites is a breath of fresh air. Google, Yahoo, Bing and Wikipedia are probably the most commonly used search engines. All of them aggregate the “top sites” in a different way. Type in a search term and get the results from Google; to see what Yahoo,Bing or Wikipedia simply click that tab and the results shift to the other search engine’s results.

To personalize your 43marks homepage, follow these steps:

1. Click on the the “customize yours” tab in the top right corner of the main page.

2. Enter in a user name, email address and a password twice.

3. Once you are all set up, you will have a default list of bookmarks and RSS feeds.

4. To change the bookmarks and RSS feeds, click [Manage]

5. Three options are presented to you: Manage Bookmarks, Manage RSS Feeds and User Settings.

If you want to wipe the slate clean, 43marks does give an option to delete all bookmarks.

6. In the RSS Manage RSS Feeds tab, the same option to start from scratch is available.

* A pretty easy way to add a feed is to click on the RSS icon most sites have. This will pull up a page with the feed address listed. The feed URL should look something like this – http://feeds.feedburner.com/MakeTechEasier

The RSS part works well, but if you want to change a feed from ESPN to Make Tech Easier, you need to delete the old one and add in the new name and address.

7. In the User Settings, you are presented a four options:

• Choose whether you want your page to be private or public so anyone can see your list of bookmarks and RSS feeds. If you choose public, just give our the URL to your page. Mine is 43marks.com/trevor_dobrygoski

• How you would like the RSS feeds displayed – Expanded or collapsed
• The maximum number of books marks to display in each category column
• How you want the bookmark or RSS link to open when clicked

With all of the distractions present to anyone who works online, 43marks is a great solution to wrangle the information you NEED to look at and none that you don’t.

What tools do you use to cut down on distractions when you work online?