Your own search engine
I'm been playing around with one of the quite cool features of Live.com search: the ability to create your own customised searches that you can then use instead of the "vanilla" search you get out of the box.
What does that mean? Well, if I'm sometimes only interested in finding sites with a ".co.uk" ending for example, or sites that are in English only, or sites in a specific country or region, etc - then I can set up a new live.com search page that always produces just that subset of search terms. And I can list that as a search provider on IE7 so it appears at the top right, always available.
Hmmm so potentially interesting, how do you do that? Here's a walkthrough of how to search for just ".co.uk" addresses that are in English:
1) Go to http://beta.search.live.com/macros/
2) Click "create a new macro"
3) Choose the "advanced" option, then click "next"
4) In the box in the middle of the screen enter "inurl:.co.uk AND language:EN" (without the quote signs). And check out all the other options while you're there - there is quite a bit of power to create sophisitcated searches such as only those that find pdf files.
5) Click "save macro"
6) Choose a name for it eg English_UK, and click "finish"
Your new search page will appear. To add it to the IE7 search providers at the top right hand corner, click "add to browser search box".
From now on you can select your "English_UK" search provider and your search will only return English language websites with a ".co.uk" in the URL.
Your can share your creations with the world, or see macros that other people have created on http://gallery.live.com/default.aspx?l=4. For example, this one just searches for MSDN content, and this one searches a long list of reference sites.
Pretty smart.
Comments
- Anonymous
September 19, 2006
Excelent! Thanks for the tip! - Anonymous
January 16, 2007
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
January 16, 2007
Hi Mary, Office 2007 and Windows Vista launch to consumer markets on 30th January, so you shouldn't have long to wait. When the beta expires you'll no longer be able to use the copy you have unfortunately. You can get a trial from http://ukireland.trymicrosoftoffice.com/ which will enable you to try out the final version (ie rather than the beta) free of charge. You need to make sure you unintall the beta before installing the trial. Please make sure you read and agree to the terms and conditions before using the product :-) Thanks.