Have you ever wanted to add a search engine to Opera or Chrome and don’t know how?

Adding a search engine to these two programs is very similar, so similar they can even use the same syntax (Opera has more advanced capabilities). In this tutorial we will be adding a Newgrounds Portal search engine and the Google Images search engine.

Whenever you see an instruction titled after a browser it means the directions will vary between browsers.

The first thing you need to do is to find the search engine manager. . .

In Chrome:
Click the wrench icon and make sure you’re in the Basics tab. Then, click the Manage button in the Default Search section.

The window that pops up allows you manage the search engines that Chrome has picked up on your adventures and includes an Add button. Click the Add button now to see the screen we will be working in.

In Opera:
Go to Tools > Preferences and make sure you’re in the Search tab. Here you can manage your search engines and assign keywords to make life easier. Clicking the Add button will bring you to the window we will be working in. I had to click Details to the stuff below it.

In Opera, you can also right-click a text box and go to Create Search then click details to see if it needs cleaning up. Opera will attempt to create an address but the generated one may not always work or be what you expected.

Adding Newgrounds Portal Search:

Now, as I have said the before the syntax is very similar. This means that for this tutorial the entry to URL field for Chrome and the Address field for Opera are going to be exactly the same and makes is easy if you ever switch browsers.

In order to find the Newgrounds Portal search I simply browsed to Newgrounds and searched for a few things. From the address I figured out that http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/search/title/ is the part that stays the same and the part following that are the keywords, which we’ll replace with %s.

%s stands for search terms, and will be replaced by whatever you search for so it’s important to put in the right place.

To add this search, simply name it “Newgrounds Flash Portal” and add a keyword. Then enter http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/search/title/%s into the URL/Address field.

You now have the Newgrounds Flash Portal Search engine integrated into your browser.

Google Images:

Following the same process (this time I used several ‘a’s for the search term), I found it easy to add Google Images. In Google Images the search terms are not at the end, but in the middle.

This shows that search engines do use their own patterns and so I replaced my several ‘a’s with %s, creating this address for the search:

http://images.google.com/images?q=%s&btnG=Search+Images

The next page will show some of the search engines I have added to Opera or Chrome including all the Newgrounds search engines.