Most browsers let you select the search engine of your choice. Some may prefer to use Google and yet others, Bing, as their default search engines.
Google Chrome offers customized search that you can add to your website. The company’s custom search engine allows web developers to build a tailored search experience using the core Google search technology. It will enable users to limit search results based on the settings that you specify. This feature is available in Microsoft Edge (Chromium) as well.
Custom search engines have undoubtedly become one of the most excellent features of any modern browser. With just a few keystrokes, you can search a website of your choice (e.g., TheWindowsClub.com) right from your address bar and carry out a custom Google search for the site’s articles.
Let us say you want to add The Windows Club search engine to Chrome. Then visit the sites search page URL; in this case – https://www.thewindowsclub.com/the-windows-club-search-results and search for anything – say Windows 11. Once the results are displayed, you may close the tab.
Add Custom Search Engine to Chrome
Now do the following. Click on the Chrome Menu button. Under Settings, look for the Search engine section.
Alternatively, directly navigate to this URL to open the Address bar search engines settings – chrome://settings/searchEngines
You will see a list of search engines, including Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Under Other search engines, you will now also see TheWindowsClub search.
Click on Make default > Done > Restart Chrome browser.
How to manually add a custom search engine in Chrome?
Right-click inside the site’s internal search box and select Add As Search Engine from the context menu. In our case, you will see it at the top of the right sidebar.
A new window should appear in the middle of the screen, requesting you to configure the new custom search engine in seconds. You should leave the URL field alone for most sites, but you can change the Name and Keyword fields.
- Name: This is the name of your custom Chrome search engine. It will come up in the address bar every time you initiate your site-specific custom search and will help you identify the desired site if you have multiple custom search engines added. Give it a proper name, as I have – The Windows Club. It is always advisable to stick with the name of the site you’re setting up with a custom search.
- Keyword: Another important field. Here’s what you type in the Chrome address bar to let the browser know you’re about to initiate a custom, site-specific search. Keep it short in my case – TWC 2, so you bypass the requirement of typing out a site’s full name to trigger a search.
When done, press OK to save your new site-specific custom search engine.
Now, visit the Chrome address bar to test your custom search engine out. Start by first typing the keyword you chose earlier, followed by the Tab key on your keyboard. You should find the cursor jumping to the right, and a new blue box appears that displays the name of the site you configured previously.
Rather than regular Google results, the site you set up will open its internal search page and display any matching results from your query.
Add Custom Search Engine to Edge
In Microsoft Edge, open Settings > Privacy and services > Services. Scroll to the bottom till you see Address bar. Click on it to open Search engine settings.
Alternatively, directly navigate to this URL to open the Address bar search engines settings – edge://settings/searchEngines
Now, if you search via your Chrome or Edge address bar, you will see results from our TWC sites only.
How to manually add a custom search engine in Edge?
- Search the website you want to add, and once done, look at the URL
- There should be a page right after the website name which ends with ?q= or anything similar
- In the case of TWC, it is https://www.thewindowsclub.com/the-windows-club-search-results?q=
- Open Chrome or Edge and go to the section where you can add a search engine.
- In the URL with %s in place of query, copy past the full URL and add %s in the end.
- The final URL should look as https://www.thewindowsclub.com/the-windows-club-search-results?q=%s
In this way, you can add any custom search engine of your choice to Edge or Chrome, by following this method or by adding its URL with “%s” in the space provided.
