A shortcut in general is defined as “a route shorter than the usual one.” I find this definition the best one because it can be applied to any meaning of the word including a “search shortcut” (not a keyboard shortcut) which basically means any pre-defined combination of characters / words that allows to quickly get an answer to your initial question.
This post is intended as a comprehensive guide to Google and Yahoo search shortcuts providing a cheat sheet of over 50 shortcuts and comparing the two search engines.
Google and Yahoo Search Shortcuts Compared:
The extended version of the table is also available as a separate HTML file here and as a .doc file here.
Google Search Shortcuts
Google is well known for its ability to give a searcher answers without him to even have to leave it SERPs.
Google has several “official” guides to its shortcuts and advanced search, and you can read them here, here and here.
Yahoo Search Shortcuts
Yahoo! newly-introduced “new” search brought a number of very useful shortcuts, described here in detail and also listed in the table above.
“Old” shortcuts are also in use, here are all of them:
- !amazon http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search?mode=blended&keyword=%s
- !audio http://audio.search.yahoo.com/search/audio?p=%s
- !ebay http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?satitle=%s
- !flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/%s/
- !image http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=%s
- !mw http://myweb.yahoo.com/myresults/ourresults?p=%s
- !news http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/search?p=%s
- !php http://www.php.net/%s
- !shop http://search.shopping.yahoo.com/search?cop=mss&p=%s
- !video http://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?p=%s
- !wiki http://en.wikipedia.org?search=%s
- !mail http://compose.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?login=1&To=%s
Create Your Own Shortcuts:
Create Shortcuts in FireFox
“Smart keywords” is the FireFox feature that lets you create shortcuts for any search engine / site you need. I have described how to create and operate FireFox smart keywords in detail previously:
Create Yahoo! Search Shortcuts:
Yahoo! open shortcuts allow to create shortcuts of your own:
- Create a shortcut for any search you want to perform;
- Type an ! (exclamation point) followed by the name of the shortcut in the Yahoo! Search box (note: doesn’t work from FireFox search plugins for me, only from Yahoo home page);
- Examples:
- !wsf to search “weather san francisco” on Yahoo!
- !ebay laptops to search for “laptops” on Ebay
Further reading:
- How to Use Boolean Search Operators : SEO Application;
- Wildcard Search : When and How To Use It;
- How To Diagnose Your Site with Google Advanced Search;
- Advanced Link: Operator to Explore Your Competitor’s Backlinks;
- More? (Share a useful post on search shortcuts and / or advanced operators and I will add it to the list).
Great list as always Ann! as for shortcuts, I am so used to my Ubiquity shortcuts that I can hardly imagine how I could do without them
Thanks, Ann. It’s amazing how versatile the search process proves to be. It’s tough to keep aware of all of them and a checklist is a great thing to keep by you.
Good info as always.
Ann thanks for sharing..
Good post Ann!
Really thorough list, some really useful shortcuts there and I’m glad you included Yahoo as some people tend to focus only on Google.
Great post, Ann.
It is worth noting that searching Yankee Scores (as listed above) provides much different results than Yankees Score. It is more of a difference than the normal singular vs. plural search.
@ryanpaulsmith
Great information for both major search engines, but some of it not working or might m not get use of it. for ex. info:http://www.apple.com/itunes/ here it only showing url and meta description, so can you give more info on this ?
thanks too much
@Maulik, I for one use url: / info: operator to see if a search engine indexed the URL.
@Unnecessary Umlaut, thanks tons! Edited the post and the downloads.
Very useful post, Ann.. as always.
Very useful. Reminds me of another cheat sheet on how to fully leverage google searching. Great stuff!
This is a great article. I’m sure to spend a bit more time on those area code and zip code shortcuts.
But aren’t there shortcuts also for searching images and videos on Google and YouTube?
Nice one..will always come handy
thanks for your information……….
Greaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat List Ann.
Thanks :)
Finally a 100% complete list of shortcuts :) Tyvm!
Nice little cheat-sheet. Thanks for the write-up this is being bookmarked with the rest of my study guides/lists.