Cutting Through the Noise: How Custom Search Shortcuts Can Improve Your Research Results
An experienced financial and crypto news writer shares their experience of struggling to find reliable information on search engines. With a focus on technology-related questions, they found that AI-based summaries, ads, and links to low-quality content dominated the results pages.
The writer, who was researching their latest book, 'Windows 11 Inside Out, Second Edition', discovered that creating custom search shortcuts could be an effective solution. By restricting the search scope to authoritative sites and reliable third-party sources, they were able to find more accurate information.
The writer created two custom search shortcuts: one for official Microsoft sites and another for a curated list of trusted sites. They used Google as their search engine, which supported multi-domain search filtering. The shortcuts worked by entering the defined keyboard shortcut followed by the spacebar or Tab, then typing in the search terms.
The writer recommends that others can create similar custom search shortcuts to improve their search results. They provide examples of shortcuts for various fields, including Microsoft, Apple, and Linux. However, they note that these shortcuts will behave differently if using a different search engine.