https://dhmontgomery.com/2025/11/fix-your-searches/

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79			<h2>How to fix your searches</h2>
80<time>Nov 16, 2025, 05:30 pm</time>
81<p>People I know often complain about how Google searches seem less helpful than they used to be. Instead of just results for your search, there’s AI chatbots and lots of little modules inserting summaries, infoboxes, news articles, other searches, and more.</p>
82
83<p>“I miss when Google was straightforward,” one friend told me today.</p>
84
85<p>Well here’s a little secret: Google still can be straightforward. You just need to know how to set it up.</p>
86
87<p>Let’s take an example search, one many people are thinking about: “<code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">19th century french history podcast</code>”. If you just type that into <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=19th+century+french+history+podcast&amp;client=firefox-b-1-d&amp;sca_esv=0d21926df0b72c1d&amp;ei=X2oaaaquLMaJptQPkPmguAk&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjq2YyN9feQAxXGhIkEHZA8CJcQ4dUDCBE&amp;uact=5&amp;oq=19th+century+french+history+podcast&amp;gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiIzE5dGggY2VudHVyeSBmcmVuY2ggaGlzdG9yeSBwb2RjYXN0MggQIRigARjDBEikEVDVAljVD3ABeAGQAQCYAYgBoAHsAqoBAzIuMrgBA8gBAPgBAfgBApgCBaAChAPCAgoQABiwAxjWBBhHwgILEAAYgAQYkQIYigXCAgUQABiABMICBhAAGBYYHsICChAhGKABGMMEGAqYAwCIBgGQBgiSBwMzLjKgB8QSsgcDMi4yuAeBA8IHBTAuNC4xyAcM&amp;sclient=gws-wiz-serp">a normal Google search</a>, you get something like this:</p>
88
89<p><img src="/images/2025/11/google-normal.png" alt="" /></p>
90
91<p>There’s a fairly helpful and accurate AI summary at the top, followed by some results; scroll further down and you’ll find some YouTube links and related searches.</p>
92
93<p>But you can still see the “straightforward” Google search results! Google has many search modes, such as “Images” for image searches and “News” for news searches. But they also offer a search mode called “Web” — probably buried under the “More” tab at the top of your screen — that provides almost <em>exactly</em> that old-fashioned Google search experience: just an uninterrupted list of websites:</p>
94
95<p><img src="/images/2025/11/google-web.png" alt="" /></p>
96
97<p>Does this sound like something you want? Maybe something you want <em>every</em> time you do a search? Good news: it’s very easy to make this happen! Below, I’ll show how you can customize the Chrome browser, and also my favorite browser, <a href="https://vivaldi.com">Vivaldi</a>, to <strong>default</strong> to the “Web” mode, as of November 2025.</p>
98
99<h2 id="customize-your-default-search-in-chrome">Customize your default search in Chrome</h2>
100
101<p>In Chrome, go into Settings, then “Search engine”, then click “Manage search engines and site search.” Then under “Site search” click “Add” and enter the following:</p>
102
103<ul>
104  <li><strong>Name:</strong> Basic Google (or whatever you want — this isn’t that important)</li>
105  <li><strong>Shortcut:</strong> gw (or whatever you want)</li>
106  <li><strong>URL with %s in place of query:</strong> <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&amp;udm=14</code> (do this <strong>exactly</strong>)</li>
107</ul>
108
109<p>Then click “Add.”</p>
110
111<p>Now on that same Settings page, find the new “Site search” option you created, click the three dots to the right of it, and click “Make default.”</p>
112
113<p>Congrats! Now any searches you launch from the address bar in Chrome will default to Google’s “Web” search. If you want to see the non-Web version of Google Search, you can always click the “All” tab (or just run a search from google.com).</p>
114
115<h2 id="customize-your-default-search-in-vivaldi">Customize your default search in Vivaldi</h2>
116
117<p>In Vivaldi, go into Settings, click “Search,” and under the “Search Engine Editor” click the “+” button to add a new search engine. Enter the following, leaving other fields unchanged:</p>
118
119<ul>
120  <li><strong>Name:</strong> Basic Google (or whatever you want — this isn’t that important)</li>
121  <li><strong>Nickname:</strong> gw (or whatever you want)</li>
122  <li><strong>URL:</strong> <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&amp;udm=14</code>

122 (do this <strong>exactly</strong>)</li>
123</ul>
124
125<p>Then click the checkbox, “Set as Default Search.”</p>
126
127<p>Congrats! Now any searches you launch from the address bar in Vivaldi will default to Google’s “Web” search. If you want to see the non-Web version of Google Search, you can always click the “All” tab (or just run a search from google.com).</p>
128
129<h2 id="taking-custom-searches-further">Taking custom searches further</h2>
130
131<p>Now that you know how to set a custom search engine, you’re prepared to go even further. If you do lots of searches of particular websites, you can preset Chrome or Vivaldi to search those websites with a simple keystroke.</p>
132
133<p>For example, one site I search <em>all the time</em> is Wikipedia. Instead of loading Wikipedia and searching from there, or doing a google search with “wikipedia” included and hoping for a good result, you can search Wikipedia <strong>directly</strong> from your browser bar.</p>
134
135<h3 id="chrome">Chrome</h3>
136
137<p>In Chrome, go into Settings, then “Search engine”, then click “Manage search engines and site search.” Then under “Site search” click “Add” and enter the following:</p>
138
139<ul>
140  <li><strong>Name:</strong> Wikipedia</li>
141  <li><strong>Shortcut:</strong> w</li>
142  <li><strong>URL with %s in place of query:</strong> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s</li>
143</ul>
144
145<p>Then click “Add.”</p>
146
147<p>Now go to your browser window, type <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">w</code> and a space, and whatever your query is. You’ll see the search bar update to add a label, “Search Wikipedia.”</p>
148
149<p>For example, many people might search “louis-philippe.” <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">w louis-philippe</code> should bring your <em>directly</em> to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Philippe_I">this page</a>. If you search something that doesn’t have a direct hit, you’ll get either a disambiguation page or a Wikipedia search result page.</p>
150
151<h3 id="vivaldi">Vivaldi</h3>
152
153<p>This search comes enabled by default! Just click in your browser bar, type <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">w</code> and a space, and then whatever you want to search Wikipedia for.</p>
154
155<h2 id="search-google-with-custom-parameters">Search Google with custom parameters</h2>
156
157<p>You might have a Google search you want to do with certain preset parameters. You can set one of these up with the same approach we already used!</p>
158
159<p>For example, let’s say you wanted a search that always appended “history” to whatever search you did.</p>
160
161<h3 id="chrome-1">Chrome</h3>
162
163<p>In Chrome, go into Settings, then “Search engine”, then click “Manage search engines and site search.” Then under “Site search” click “Add” and enter the following (note the “<code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">+history</code>” segment of the URL):</p>
164
165<ul>
166  <li><strong>Name:</strong> History Google</li>
167  <li><strong>Shortcut:</strong> h</li>
168  <li><strong>URL with %s in place of query:</strong> <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">https://www.google.com/search?q=%s+history&amp;udm=14</code></li>
169</ul>
170
171<h3 id="vivaldi-1">Vivaldi</h3>
172
173<p>In Vivaldi, go into Settings, click “Search,” and under the “Search Engine Editor” click the “+” button to add a new search engine. Enter the following, leaving other fields unchanged (note the “<code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">+history</code>” segment of the URL):</p>
174
175<ul>
176  <li><strong>Name:</strong> History Google</li>
177  <li><strong>Nickname:</strong> h</li>
178  <li><strong>URL:</strong> <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">https://www.google.com/search?q=%s+history&amp;udm=14</code></li>
179</ul>
180
181<h2 id="preset-google-power-search-techniques">Preset Google power-search techniques</h2>
182
183<p>You can use the same approach to use Google’s various power-search techniques as a preset. For example, say you search for PDF documents all the time. The following technique will let you type, for example, “<code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">pdf yougov economist poll</code>” and return only PDFs matching the “yougov economist poll” part of the search without needing to type “filetype:pdf”:</p>
184
185<h3 id="chrome-2">Chrome</h3>
186
187<ul>
188  <li><strong>Name:</strong> PDF Google</li>
189  <li><strong>Shortcut:</strong> pdf</li>
190  <li><strong>

190URL with %s in place of query:</strong> <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">https://www.google.com/search?q=%s+filetype%3Apdf&amp;udm=14</code></li>
191</ul>
192
193<h3 id="vivaldi-2">Vivaldi</h3>
194
195<ul>
196  <li><strong>Name:</strong> PDF Google</li>
197  <li><strong>Nickname:</strong> pdf</li>
198  <li><strong>URL:</strong> <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">https://www.google.com/search?q=%s+filetype%3Apdf&amp;udm=14</code></li>
199</ul>
200
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