Now, THIS is fun!
So!
I came across Thio Joe’s video the other day on better Google searches. It’s about using the “Web” search tab not the “All” tab. Apparently, all you need to do is add udm=14 to the search URL. Personally, I use DuckDuckGo and it’s much better than default Google search in returning relevant results.
“This seems cool, but I don’t see a need for it.” I thought.
Although I’m aware of search operators (which work with DuckDuckGo too by the way), sometimes I’m still unable to find relevant results. 🥲 Today, one of those lovely saturdays, I was having a hard time finding something and decided to test it out. Turns out, it’s uh-mazing! Much better than DuckDuckGo honestly. Search results were a lot more consistent and relevant.
And if you know me, I like to spice things up a bit. 😏
Hm. I’m not exactly interested in changing my default search engine from DuckDuckGo to Google (due to DuckDuckGo’s added privacy settings), but I’d like to get relevant search results. 🤔 So?
Meet Flow Launcher!
(Just realized I’ve never written about Flow Launcher. 🤔 Easily one of my favorite tools on Windows. 🙌)
Yeah yeah yeah, get on with it, we don’t have all day. 🙄
With the Web Searches plugin, I’m able to create quick shortcuts to scour the internet. For example, look up synonyms of a word on Thesaurus.com without having to first open up a browser, focus the search bar, open Thesaurus.com, focus yet another search bar, type the word I’m desperately trying to find a synonym for (if I still remember at that point), and then hit enter.
That’s a pain! So instead, I fire up Flow Launcher with Alt+Space, type th <word>, and hit Enter. Boom. 💥 All that headache solved in 3 steps.
Same with Dictionary.com, GitHub, YouTube, Reddit—GET TO THE WEB SEARCH PART ALREADY!
Right! So, Flow Launcher, Web Searches plugin. Great stuff.
I added two new shortcuts: (1) Proper web search with udm=14 in search URL, and (2) Verbatim web search with tbs=li:1 and udm=14 in search URL.
Here’s a quick demo:
That. Is. All.
Bye.
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