fast searches with custom search engines

I do a lot of learning, which today means tons of searching on different websites. I've found a trick which makes my job a lot faster -- custom search aliases. In the URL bar, I can type "k explain" to automatically go to the Kubernetes.io site, search for "explain", and give me the results. When I need another cat image for one of my presentations, I type "gis cat" into the URL bar to ask Google Image Search for some inspirational furriness.  Man.cx has all the Linux manpages. Python.org has all the Python modules carefully documented. I have aliases for all of the above and use them constantly.

Here's how to make your daily searches much, much easier:

Easy, very fast keyword searches

1. go to site, do search. Example: https://kubernetes.io, search for "explain"
2. URL has term in bar. Replace it with "%s". For the above example you'll get https://kubernetes.io/docs/search/?q=%s
3. copy URL
4. right click URL, select "Edit Search Engines"
5. under Other Search Engines, click Add button
6. type something for Search Engine ("kubernetes"), then a short alias ("k"), and for the URL, paste the URL with "%s" in it
7. click Add

Testing

In URL bar, type alias then another search term. e.g. "k beer". The resulting page will be a Search Results page, with your new term in it.

Compatibility

The above instructions are for Google Chrome, but all browsers support something like this.