If, like me, you do a big amount of searching on various sites, Firefox includes a nifty, in-built tool that should greatly facilitate your searching. This tool is called "Add Keyword for this Search".

How to use it? The process is simple and is described below. What it does? It allows you to search directly from your address bar, and to any custom search engines you will define. It may not work for all (eg. Yahoo didn't work for me), but works for most.

Steps:

1) First, find the search you want to "tag" as I will refer to it. I am using google here.

2) Right-click on the search box and select "Add Keyword for this Search"


3) You will be presented with this window. Type the name of the search engine in the Name field. Eg. Google. In the Keyword field, type a word or letter that you will use to identify Google. You might choose something like "goog" or even "g" as I did.

4) Save the bookmark in your chosen folder. I saved it in the Quick Search folder. If you don't have one, you can create one in Bookmarks - Organize Bookmarks.


5) Now, to make use of your new tag, simply type your Keyword in the address bar, followed by your search query. I used "g testsearch" as I wanted to search Google for the query "testsearch".


6) As you can see, Google returned results for "testsearch".

7) Now, you can go to your favourite sites, and tag their search boxes. This makes searching easy and direct from your address bar. I find this method easier than adding custom search boxes to Firefox.

8) Some useful sites you might want to tag, and suggested keywords:

- Google: g, goog, ggl
- Google Images: gi, ggli, googi
- Wikipedia: wiki, wp, enc
- Ebay: eby, eb
- Amazon: ama, az
- DeviantArt: da, dart
- Last.FM: lfm, lf, fm
- Youtube: you, yt, ytb

You can define almost every search engines and your own keywords. Go figure which sites you want to "tag".

Hope this tip helps you. Comments appreciated! :)