Searching Google Land with Shortmarks

written by Sue Frantz | August 22, 2012



Late last year I wrote about Shortmarks (see blog post), a web-based service that provides a faster way to visit the web. For example, when I type the letter h in my browser’s address box, I’m whisked to my college’s website; the h is short for Highline Community College. The letters bn take me to Barnes and Noble. If in my browser’s address bar, I type bn Bird Sense, the Barnes and Noble site is automatically searched for books titled Bird Sense. (Side note: I just finished this book by Tim Birkhead. I highly recommend it for anyone with even a passing interest in birds.)

How Shortmarks works.

I tell my browser to make Shortmarks my default search engine. Any search I do in my browser gets filtered through my Shortmarks account first. If Shortmarks doesn’t have a match, Shortmarks will redirect to the search engine of my choosing.

When I edit my Shortmarks bookmarks, this is what I see. The keyword is what I type in my browser’s address bar. See bn? The name is the name of the website. The direct link is the URL for the website. If I just type bn, I am sent to this page. The next column, search link, is what is triggered when I type something after the keyword. In the example above, bn Bird Sense, launched the search link URL where Bird Sense was the search term.

Those search link URLs are incredibly useful, but they can be a bit of a hassle to find. Dwight Stegall in the Google forums kindly provided a bunch specifically for Google. Here are some search links for your reference.

Google calendar: https://www.google.com/calendar/render?tab=oc&q=%s

Google images: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=%s&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2

Google video: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=%s&hl=en&emb=0&aq=f#

Google maps: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=%s&hl=en&emb=0&sa=N&tab=vl

Google news: http://news.google.com/news?q=%s&hl=en&emb=0&sa=N&tab=ln

Gmail: https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&shva=1#search/%s

Google books: http://books.google.com/books?q=%s&hl=en&sa=N&tab=fp

Google scholar: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%s&hl=en&sa=N&tab=Ts

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/results?q=%s&hl=en&sa=N&tab=b1

Google docs: https://docs.google.com/?hl=en&tab=bo#search/%s

Google reader: https://www.google.com/reader/view/?hl=en&tab=by#search/%s/

Google I’m Feeling Lucky: http://www.google.com/search?btnI=3564&q=%s

Google web search: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%s