I have switched the main search engine from Google or Bing to DuckDuckGo in all of my browsers. There is not one but several reasons for that: from preferring unfiltered results over filtered ones (who really needs personalization anyway when searching?) to better privacy and the excellent !bang feature that is so helpful in many cases.

I'm still making use of the other search engines though, I would be foolish not to, but the main search engine, the one that I try first, is DuckDuckGo.

While it returns results that I can work with most of the time, it fails at other times. Especially searches where you search for specific versions of products seems to fall in that category. I often search for things like Firefox 20 release notes and would expect the first result to point me to the release notes page on Mozilla. Often though it links to an older page and sometimes even in a different language.

Still, if I weight in everything it is the best search engine for my purpose right now, especially since I can use the !bang feature to quickly redirect the search to Google, Bing or even Ghacks (yes, the !ghacks bang redirects you right here on the first page of the search results).

Today I'd like to share with you a set of bangs and other features that were recently added to the search engine. To use any of them, simply add them to your search query.

! yopmail - if you are using the temporary email service Yopmail you can speed up things by looking up emails for any name using the search engine. Just type ghacks !yopmail to look up the email address ghacks on the email services' website.

- if you are using the temporary email service Yopmail you can speed up things by looking up emails for any name using the search engine. Just type ghacks !yopmail to look up the email address ghacks on the email services' website. !amo - search for add-ons on the Firefox Add-ons repository.

- search for add-ons on the Firefox Add-ons repository. private ip - displays private network IP addresses directly in the results including IPv4 addresses, Carrier NAT, test networks and private network IPv6 addresses.

- displays private network IP addresses directly in the results including IPv4 addresses, Carrier NAT, test networks and private network IPv6 addresses. ip - displays your current IP and location directly in the results.

- displays your current IP and location directly in the results. ! coral - use the Coral network to access a site, helpful if the site itself is done right now. You may get access to a cached version of the site to retrieve the data that is on it.

- use the Coral network to access a site, helpful if the site itself is done right now. You may get access to a cached version of the site to retrieve the data that is on it. ! css - look up CSS properties, redirects to the Mozilla Developer Network.

- look up CSS properties, redirects to the Mozilla Developer Network. !cpp - look up C++ information on cplusplus.com. Use !cppr as an alternative.

- look up C++ information on cplusplus.com. Use as an alternative. ! whois - look up the whois record of a domain.

- look up the whois record of a domain. !ext - retrieve information about a selected file extension.

- retrieve information about a selected file extension. !leo - look up words on the LEO dictionary website.

- look up words on the LEO dictionary website. ! market - searches on Android Market.

- searches on Android Market. ! - takes you to the first result, similar to Google's I feel lucky feature.

This is just a small selection that I find useful. You can check out the - very very long - list here.

Summary Article Name DuckDuckGo: another bag of tricks to get the most out of it Description The guide highlights several useful !bangs that DuckDuckGo Search supports to redirect searches to other search engines or services on the Internet. Author Martin Brinkmann Publisher Ghacks Technology News Logo

Advertisement