[zackola]

I've been using Duck Duck Go as my primary search for the last month - it's pretty great! And if you need to fallback to google because you want a map or something else there are a bunch of ! shortcuts to go right there. (!map is most frequently used by me)

[BrandonM]

I'm forever confused by technical users who laud DDG's ! support. I love DDG and use it as my primary search engine, but Firefox has featured keyword searches for years now. Any search box anywhere can be turned into a URL keyword search.

I use "m" for searching Google Maps, "im" for Google Images, "w" for Wikipedia, "dict" and "thes" for dictionary.com, "bt" for searching torrents, and the list goes on. Just yesterday I added one so that I can type "to 123 Main St 12345" in the Location Bar and it automatically gives me the Google Maps driving directions from my house to the indicated address.

It's as simple as right-clicking a search box and selecting "Add a Keyword for this Search...". Use it :)

[JoshCole]

I second this post and want to mention that support for this exists in Chrome as well. You don't even need to grab an addon. The searchable bookmarks site, trunkly, turned me on to this feature. I nearly posted a Tell HN when I realized what I had been shown.

Add Keyword Search In Chrome: http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=95...

Add Keyword Search In Firefox: http://lifehacker.com/397071/easily-manage-firefox-3-keyword...

Enjoy!

[snarkyturtle]

I've been using keyword searches for longer than I've been using DDG but the thing is that instead of looking for a site to search on, you can just search for it on DDG and if there's a ! search for it you don't need to do the extra effort. It's essentially a precompiled search library with keywords that correspond to what you want to search for.

[rickr]

FYI:

!gm is a bit shorter and also goes to Google maps.

[epi0Bauqu]

!m is even shorter.