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Comment by justin_ | Hacker News Reader

DDG's !bang searches convinced me to use it as my default search. Being able to search various sites from the address bar is really useful. And if their results are ever poor, I can always get to Google with just a !g. I know you could do that before with keyword searches, but with DDG I don't have to worry about setting it up.

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In your opinion, how is the bang code system superior to using "site:amazon.com" on Google?

Well, instead of typing site:amazon.com you only have to type !a

That's a lot less to type

Correct me if I'm wrong, but to use the !bang system you have to memorize the short form for every site or service you want to use it for, is that right?

For example, amazon.co.uk is !amazonuk - I don't see the meaningful improvement there.

DDG has six thousand of them, most of which don't benefit from a great shortening of the name. To search answers.com it's !answers - that's an extremely small improvement over site:answers.com given the need to memorize a bang for each thing you want to use it against.

It's not really hard to memorise a bang, especially if you use it often like !w for wikipedia or !yt for youtube.

Maybe most of them don't benefit a great shortening of the name, but the most common do.

And for the other, like answers.com, !answers is still 8 characters shorter than site:answers.com

You should really try to use bangs for a while, I'm sure you would see the appeal very quickly

As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, DDG also supports use of "site:amazon.co.uk." So, you have the option to memorize the short form for what I presume to be the sites you personally search for the most.

This is interesting: it is one way to allow for a better search experience through personalized search options without using data collected about me.

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