I could search a plate of beans

June 6, 2007 6:40 AM

Add keyboard shortcuts to Google results pages. One of several new experimental search styles provided by Google Labs.
posted by grouse (20 comments total)

Hasn't this been in Google Labs for several years? Interesting that it only just now moved to beta, but also not exactly a new offering from Google.
posted by majick at 6:43 AM on June 6, 2007

Of course, if you're using Firefox, you can set up a keyword search for the keyboard shortcut search by bookmarking this:

g: Google Search

Then open the properties for that bookmark (with the bookmark's context menu in Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks... or your Bookmarks menu) and set the Keyword to g.

Now you can use the glorious keyboard shortcut search this way:

1. Ctrl+L (move to location bar)
2. g mysearchterms

Voila, no more mouse necessary. Extending this to other platforms and browsers is left as an exercise to the user.
posted by grouse at 6:45 AM on June 6, 2007

majick: if you can find evidence that Google provided this to the public more than a month ago, please post it here. Otherwise, the appropriate place to complain about someone else's post is in MetaTalk. Thanks! :)
posted by grouse at 6:50 AM on June 6, 2007

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/12/googles-discontinued-services.html
posted by Plutor at 7:02 AM on June 6, 2007

grouse: if you can find evidence that Google provided this to the public more than a month ago, please post it here.

Here you go.

thanks plutor
posted by splatta at 7:03 AM on June 6, 2007

shit!
posted by splatta at 7:03 AM on June 6, 2007

Thanks Plutor. Looks like they have brought it back.
posted by grouse at 7:04 AM on June 6, 2007

Hi there, grouse. Sorry if you took my comment as somehow deriding your post. It was an honest attempt to add some context. The feature was first shown in 2002 and thus is not, in fact, a new offering. It was pretty cool back then, and it's pretty cool now, but let's not go giving me a bunch of guff because you didn't try it five years ago.
posted by majick at 7:05 AM on June 6, 2007

There's a long, tragic story behind my unadorned comment and splatta's better one. It's a race condition that we all regret being a part of.

Also, this is awesome. This is a good post. I like keyboard shortcuts now a lot more than I did in 2002.
posted by Plutor at 7:06 AM on June 6, 2007

majick: OK, cool, this was all a misunderstanding.
posted by grouse at 7:09 AM on June 6, 2007

Metafilter: This was all a misunderstanding.

I've known that all along!
posted by HuronBob at 8:28 AM on June 6, 2007

There's a nice Firefox extension that adds similar, but not quite so nifty keyboard selection of results, and works on other sites too (Yahoo!, del.icio.us, etc.): Search Keys.
posted by jack_mo at 8:31 AM on June 6, 2007

This is probably a stupid question, but why is this helpful? Is it because you've already typed in the query, and so you can just keep using the keyboard to navigate?
posted by unknowncommand at 8:48 AM on June 6, 2007

Some vi nerd at Google came up with this.

(I like it, though)
posted by jefbla at 9:10 AM on June 6, 2007

Want to see some other Google magic? Do a search on Images, and then append &imgtype=face to the url. It's terrifying when you search your own name, but also pretty cool at the same time.
posted by tracert at 9:26 AM on June 6, 2007 [2 favorites]

Google kid is watching you watch him point out your lack of shortcut skills.

Holy shit, google kid is 2 blocks from where I used to live. Weird!
posted by myeviltwin at 10:43 AM on June 6, 2007

you mean Tab, shift+tab, space bar, ctrl+d, enter and the other native key commands arent good enough for you?
posted by subaruwrx at 11:51 AM on June 6, 2007

The vi shortcuts kind of rule.
posted by justina at 1:19 PM on June 6, 2007

Man do I *looooove* vi(m) keybindings. I use them whenever I can...

J MEANS DOWN. That's just the way it is.

I didn't know about this before - thanks for the post.
posted by facetious at 6:24 PM on June 6, 2007

Google continues to innovate. And that in itself justifies a share price of over a USD500. Name any other company or organization involved in this inter-webby thingy that comes up with more new things, new ideas and new ways of doing things. You can't.
posted by vac2003 at 2:37 AM on June 7, 2007