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

A search engine I’ve been hearing mentioned more and more lately is Blekko, so I decided to take a closer look to see if it actually offers anything different to El Goog’s algorithm. I don’t know if many of you have noticed, but Google’s search results have been looking more and more “gamed” lately, with spam becoming pervasive.

So What’s on Offer?

Blekko pitches itself as a search engine with a difference. Through its use of “slashtags”, it allows you to specify what section of the web you are trying to pull results from. Basically if you want to search for something health-related, for example, you would type “/health keyword” and so on. Blekko claims to filter out content farms, spam and malware. Google’s become quite good at filtering out malware, however as I mentioned earlier, its record on spam and content farms is not looking so great right now. Of course, it’s one thing to claim great features like these, but the proof should be in the proverbial pudding. So, does Blekko deliver?

The Results

Let me preface this by saying that this is a highly subjective analysis, and you are best trying it out for yourself. Anyway, I decided to try a bunch of searches in a variety of niches in both Blekko and Google, to test which search engine delivered more relevant results. I used google.com/ncr in order to ensure that Google was showing non-geographically determined results. For some queries, I ran two searches in Google to compare the results adequately, one using the Blekko slashtag as an extra keyword and one without.

Search 1:
Blekko search: “/health weight loss”
Google search 1: “weight loss”
Google search 2: “health weight loss”

Results: Again, highly subjective, but I found the second set of Google search results to be the most relevant. The first result in Blekko was headed “Vinegar may aid in Fat Loss”, second was “Yoga – Prevention” and third was “Sleep loss limits Fat Loss”, whereas the Google search results #2 were “Healthy Weight Loss and Dieting Tips”, “Healthy Eating and Diet Center” and “Weight Loss – Mayo Clinic”.

Search 2:
Blekko search: “/recipes chocolate cake”
Google search: “chocolate cake recipes”

Results: To be honest, I could not discern a quality or relevance different between these results. A tie.

Search 3:
Blekko search: “/smallbusiness accounting”
Google search: “small business accounting”

Results: Blekko wins this one. It linked to a number of pages that talk about how to select software for accounting, as well as a guide from the IRS. The Google results, on the other hand, were purely commercial – with software companies taking the top two places.

Search 4:
Blekko search: “/travel new york”
Google search: “new york travel”

Results: This one’s a tie. They both showed official NY tourism websites, with the only difference in the top 3 being a Yahoo travel link from Blekko and a NY Times link from Google

Wrap-up

This limited testing of mine suggests that, at the very least, Blekko is worth a look. Especially if you aren’t finding what you want on Google. While there is some overlap in the results, there are also some situations where Blekko shows markedly different results. Please comment on your experiences with Blekko below.

While Google, Bing, and Yahoo! are arguably the leaders in search, there are literally dozens of search engines out there. Many of those engines track your search history and, based on that history, put you in what’s been called a “search filter bubble”.

Enter DuckDuckGo. It’s not your average search engine. Not only does it maintain your privacy, it also has a number of nifty features that make the search engine more useful.

Let’s take a closer look at DuckDuckGo.

Using It

If you want to do a search, just head over to DuckDuckGo. Its front page looks a bit like Google, doesn’t it? Very minimal, very uncluttered, and very easy to understand.

Just type what you want to find — for example, MakeTechEasier — in the search box. Then, press Enter.

OK, nothing you haven’t seen before. But take a look to the right of the results. Notice the list of Search ideas? They apply additional criteria to your search. Click one of the search ideas, say +Tutorials and you get a more focused version of your search.

For the techie (or techie wannabe), there are also tech-related utilities that do more complex calculations, offer useful computing tools — like a whois search and a password generator – and links to cheatsheets.

More Than A Search Engine

But DuckDuckGo does more than search. It has a number of nifty utilities that you might find handy. Click Goodies on the main page. On the Goodies page, you can:

• Do mathematical calculations
• Perform conversions
• Find a list of DuckDuckGo keyboard shortcuts
• Get weather information

And a lot more.

You can also change a large number of settings. Click Settings on the main page. There are settings for how DuckDuckGo handles results, for tightening your privacy options, and for changing the look and feel of the front page.

The settings are easy to change. Select an option from one of the many drop-down lists on the Settings page, and then click the Click here to save and go back link at the bottom of the page.

!Bang

No, MakeTechEasier isn’t trying to shoot you. Using DuckDuckGo’s !Bang feature, you can essentially combine two steps into one: go to a particular site and automatically search for a keyword.

How does it work? Say you want to search Barnes & Noble for a book on WordPress. Just type !bn wordpress in the search box and press Enter. You automagically jump to the Barnes & Noble site and results matching your query appear.

There are !Bangs for over 100 sites. You can find a list of those sites here. The great thing about using a !Bang is that it saves you time. Depending on the site, though, the results may or may not be what you’re after.

If you don’t care about your search results being highly personalized, then you should definitely give DuckDuckGo a close look. You still get great results but with less spam and you don’t have to worry about being trapped in a search filter bubble. On top of that, DuckDuckGo’s other features and functions make it even more useful.

Photo credit: DarkSide

Because of the digital trend toward the social aspect of the web, it is natural there would be applications to help you search and track information on the social web. 48ers is one of those.

On a Personal basis

For the everyday Joe, there are a few benefits to a social search engine like 48ers. One of the most popular reasons for using this type of search is for researching a product you’d like to purchase. You can enter in a product name and see what people are currently saying about that product.

Sure you can go onto Twitter and search there or ask the people who follow you what they think, then head over to Facebook and post a question there, then mozy on over to Google Buzz and do the same thing.

It is much easier to do it all in one search. Plus you will be searching other sites along with the 3 big name sites.

From Business point of view

Businesses are using social search engines for much more than being social. It is life or death these days to know what people are saying about you. More so than when you were the popular kid in high school.

Being able to search multiple sites at the same time is a real time saver for businesses taking social media and their online presence seriously. Tracking a hastag for an event, a brand, product or anything else is much easier when you can search multiple sites simultaneously.

What makes 48ers cool

If you are one of the 80% of the Googlers out there, you will see a striking similarity to your favorite search engine. The simplicity makes it feel like home when you are searching the social web.

In the left sidebar, you will see the sites 48ers is pulling results from. If you would like to filter your results you can do so by clicking on the site you want to see the results from. When filtering the results, you can only see one site at a time.

I really like how they have a “Useful Searches” section in the sidebar. There are some searches in there that are kind of “ah-ha moment” searches. I mean, they make complete sense when you see them, yet you didn’t think to search for.

What site is the result from?

When you perform a search for any term, you can see the logo of the social site at the beginning of each result in the list. Results from social bookmarking sites don’t always show a logo because they aren’t from a social site like Twitter.

Overall, there isn’t a lot to show with a search engine. Even though there is a lot of potential uses for a social search engine, everyone will use it differently. Play around a little and try different search types. Use the filters, try the suggested searches to see what you come up with.

The social web is not an exact science even though many people claim to know it all. Spend the time getting to know the basics and the rest of the time searching for and talking to people with similar interests. That’s what the whole social thing is all about.

What do you use social search engines for?

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.

Social search engines have been gaining popularity with everyone from news providers to the everyday person like you and me. They bring you the most current and opinion based information available.

Two of the most popular sites that search Twitter are Topsy and Tweetmeme. Both offer the the same basic service, they go about it in totally different ways. Here is a breakdown of the two.

Topsy

Homepage

On your first arrival to the the homepage, you will notice Topsy has a very simplistic Google–like layout. It is also very similar to Twitter’s own search page; very few words, just a search bar and some trending topics.

Results

The way Topsy gets the results for your search, is by tracking the links people send when they are talking back and forth on Twitter. The more people like to something the higher up in the ranks a link can go in the results. Also, the more influential the person talking about the link helps too.

New Results

For some searches, you may want to keep updated on the results. You may have a product you are looking for reviews on, managing a brand or maybe you want to know when someone talks about your favorite sports team; Topsy has options for you. You are given two options to follow future results; RSS and email alerts.

Search Filters
Being able to filter out parts of the search you are not interested in can save you a ton of time. Filter results with photos, by tweets or web results. In addition to where to search, you also have the option of when to search.

Tweetmeme

Homepage

Tweetmeme has a different approach to the results it displays. The first thing that popped into my head when I saw Tweetmeme’s homepage was how much it reminded me of Digg. It has a similar layout and the main page displays new and popular tweets from all categories.

The Button

I am sure every one of you has seen a tweetmeme button on a site. If not, it looks a little something like this:

When you click the button to RT, this helps them stay on top of what people are tweeting about.

Results

As you can see, there is a lot more going on when you click on a specific story. You are shown the original tweet, stories from the front page, options to comment, follow, RTs and even the analytics of the tweet.

Filters

When drilling down your search results with Tweetmeme, you are given the options of when and by category or channel. Despite my initial thoughts, this works pretty well to narrow the results helping you find relevant stories to your search.

Conclusion

The way I see most people using these sites is:

Topsy would be used more of a research and result tracking social search engine. Because there is a lack of socialness in the query results, it is a great place to keep up with what people buzzing about. Great for tracking brands, keywords, events or how viral a link is.

Tweetmeme would be used if you want to search and engage people who are talking about like minded topics or links. Finding like minded people and being able to follow them on the spot is great. Not having an option to follow the results of the query doesn’t make it the ideal tool for following a topic long term, but it IS great for quick searches or seeing what is trending and who is making it popular.

What do you think?

image credit: tristanf

Using the Web Site

When you log in, you will see a search page like you would see for any search engine. It has the current trending topics, if you wanted to check out what is popular on Twitter.

When you search for something, then the search results are shown in the image below. On the left-hand corner, you can decide what timeline you want to choose from. Also, you can select if you want to search the web, photos, or actual tweets. However, viewing the web allows you to view the tweets as well because the listing has the tweet below.

If you decide to log in with your Twitter user ID and password, you will see a home page that shows all of the things that you have posted on social media networks, how many times people have tweeted the same link, and information, like your web site, that Twitter account is associated with.

On March 3rd, Topsy introduced alerts. You can get search results right to your inbox.

Adding a Topsy Button To Your WordPress Site

Like Tweetmeme, Topsy allows you to place a retweet button on your site. If you are using a WordPress site, there are two ways to add their button on your site: WordPress plugin and Javascript version.

The Topsy WordPress plugin is easy to install. After installing the plugin, you will go to Settings to customize the button. One thing that I like about Topsy, that I haven’t seen with other retweet buttons is that it gives you a wide range of options on where to display the retweet button. If you don’t want it on all your pages, then you can pick-and-choose which ones you want to place them on. You can also add your own CSS.

I like the fact that you can change the color scheme to fit your site/blog. Also, that if you delete or update your blog, you are able to notify Topsy, and they will be sure to reflect that on their end. Very useful.

The trackback feature is pretty nifty because you can create trackbacks if someone leaves a comment. Not sure if I like this “Only create trackback comments from influential tweeters.“ How can they know that? If I have a technology-type site/blog, the people I find influential are going to be different if I had a fashion site/blog. This is what it states on their site: “On our website, roughly the top 0.2% most influential of all Twitter users are tagged “Highly Influential”, and “Influential” tags appear for the top 0.5% most influential Twitter users.” I would love to hear from Topsy creators to figure out their calculation.

Topsy is an interesting search engine and application. I like the layout and the search display on their web site. It’s also great that they have a user profile that allows you to see how your tweets are doing. However, with Google and Yahoo! partnering up with Twitter and having tweets as part of their search results, Topsy has to find a way to keep things interesting. Their WordPress plugin is one of the most flexible ones that I have seen when it comes to retweeting buttons. However, this “influential” tweeter trackback feature kind of threw me off. Overall, Topsy has potential.

Have you used Topsy retweet button on your site?

There are often times when we need to perform searches on a specific site other than Google. In Firefox, you can easily add custom search engine with to Add to Search bar extension. In Google Chrome, there are no such extensions at the moment, so we have to add our favorite search engines manually. Luckily this is not a difficult task. Read on to find out how to add custom search engine to your Google Chrome.

First, navigate to the site where you want to add the search engine, for example maketecheasier.com.

Perform a search with any keyword. It doesn’t matter what the search term is, what you need is only the search URL.

Copy the search URL.

In your Chrome toolbar, click on the Tool icon and select Options.

In the Default Search section, click the Manage button.

Click Add.

In the Name field, enter the site’s name, or the custom search engine name.

In the Keyword field, enter a phrase to be used as an identifier for the Chrome omnibar.

In the URL field, paste the search URL that you have copied previously.

Scroll through the URL and find the location of the search term. Replace the search term with ‘%s‘ (without the quote).

Click OK. Close all the Options windows.

To perform a search on your newly added custom search engine, first enter the keyword follow by a space. The custom search engine icon will appear.

Carry on to enter the search term and press [Enter] to perform the search.

Make your custom search engine default

To make your custom search engine default, click on the Tool icon and select Option.

Go to the Default Search section and click the Manage button.

Highlight the custom search engine and click Make Default.

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

Now, the question is: can this search process get any easier?

The answer is Yes, if you are using Inquisitor. You’ll be surprised how much faster, quicker and easier you can now search with the search bar.

Inquisitor is a browser plugin that extends the functionality of the search bar. It makes the search bar more intuitive, responsive and much easier to use. As you type in the search bar, Inquisitor starts to search the web and brings back the result on the fly, and enabling you to access to your search result faster.

Inquisitor is owned by Yahoo and is compatible with Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer 7, 8. It also works in Mac, PC and iPhone.

Once you have installed the respective extension for your browser, it will automatically replace your search bar. To perform an intuitive search, simply type in the search bar. A list of suggestions will appear as soon as you type. The initial result is based on your browser history, but as you type, the list get refined and brings in more relevant result for your search term. In most cases, I am able to find what I want without having to complete the search terms.

Inquisitor also comes with several configuration options that you can set to suit your preferences.

Options that you can configure include:

Auto-complete settings

Inquisitor will attempt to auto-complete your search term as you type. You can either make it auto-complete the entire phrase, current word or do nothing. Personally, I have found that choosing the “auto-complete current word only” option gives you better control of your search results.

Instant result setting

In the dropdown list of suggestion, you can You can choose how the result is displayed, whether website result first or keyword suggestions first.

Display count

Number of website results and keyword suggestions to display in the dropdown list.

Search Engine

The default search engine is Yahoo. You can also set it to Google.

A thing to note here: If you set the search engine to Google, the website result search will cease to work. You will only see keyword suggestions in the dropdown list.

Display links to additional search engines

If you are frequently using Wikipedia, Flickr or any other search engines to perform your search, this is where you add in the additional search engine to the dropdown list.

Conclusion

Depending on how often you use your browser’s search bar, this plugin can be useful/useless to you. For me, it has definitely improved my productivity and enabled me to get my search result much faster and easier. Being cross-platform/cross-browser compatible also make it a highly versatile tool, not to mention that it works great in iPhone and iPod Touch too.

What do you think?

1) Installing Add to Search Bar extension

Add to Search Bar is a Firefox extension that allows you to add any search engine to your search bar. Go to your favorite site. Right click on the Search box and select “Add to Search Bar“.

2) Create your own search engine via Mycroft Project 

Mycroft Project is a site created by the Mozdev team that hosts a collection of Sherlock and OpenSearch search engine. It also has a form generator that you can use it to create your own search engine.

• Go to http://mycroft.mozdev.org/submitos.html
• Fill in the form details
• If you are not sure what to put in the Search URL field, go to your favorite site and perform a search with the site’s search bar. On the address bar, copy the URL and replace your search term by {searchTerms}. Paste the result into the Search URL field. For example, when you search Make Tech Easier, you will get a URL something like this:

http://maketecheasier.com/about/search-result/?cx=012219648382774935931%3A71v9_lruh3c&cof=FORID%3A11&q=your-search-term

Replace your-search-term by {searchTerms} and you get something like:

http://maketecheasier.com/about/search-result/?cx=012219648382774935931%3A71v9_lruh3c&cof=FORID%3A11&q={searchTerms}

Paste this URL to the Search URL field. 

• Once you have completed the form, scroll down and click on the Generate Plugin button. Code will show up on the text area.
• Click on the Install Plugin. A window will pop up and ask you if you want to install the search engine in your search bar. 
   
• Click Add. Once you are happy, click Submit Plugin to enter your search engine to Mycroft database.

3) Hacking the backend

If you don’t like to install any extensions as you might feel that it will slow down your Firefox’s performance and you don’t want to submit your search engine to Mycroft, the other way that you can do is to hack the backend of Firefox. Don’t worry, it’s very easy.

• Open up a text editor.
• Copy and paste the following to the text editor.

<search
name=”Name_Of_Search_Engine”
method=”GET”
action=”URL_Of_Search_Engine_Result_Page”
queryCharset=”utf-8″
>
<input name=”search_parameter” value=”Value_of_parameter_required_to_carry_out_the_search”>
<input name=”q” user>
</search>

• Change the Name_Of_Search_Engine to your search engine name.
• Change the URL_Of_Search_Engine_Result_Page to the search url of the site (without the search parameter)
• In the input field, enter any relevant search parameter in the search url. Leave the <input name=”q” user> as it is.
• Save the file and give it a .src extension (for example: your_search_engine.src) 

If you are using Windows, save the file to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins

If you are using Ubuntu, first save the file to the desktop. Open up your terminal and type

sudo cp ~/Desktop/your_search_engine.src /usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins/

If you are using Mac OS X, this method does not work. 

Restart your Firefox and you should find your new custom search engine in the search bar

Adding an image to your custom search engine

Create a image of size 16×16 pixels and save it with the same name as your search engine. It doesn’t matter if you save it as jpg, gif or png.

Now copy and paste the image to the same directory where you place the search_engine.src file.

Done!