Focused Search brings more relevant results with less typing when doing internet searches. It is especially useful when doing many similar or repetitive searches in a narrow area.
Search engines have parameters that can help you focus your search. Among other things, you can focus on a particular site, include or exclude words and phrases. The only issue is that you have to type these parameters every time you search. This typing can get tedious quickly, especially on mobile devices.
Focused Search makes search parameters easier to use, reuse and combine.
The following can be customised and saved for reuse:
• Search engine
• Specific site where you want your results to come from
• Helper phrase - add words to make the search more specific, or prefix with a - sign to exclude them
These are the situations where it could be useful:
STREAMLINE SEARCH - SPECIFY A SITE
When you already know the site where your information is and anticipate that search engines might return better results than the sites own search.
STREAMLINE SEARCH - ADD A HELPER PHRASE
For example, if you often search for nutritional values of different foods, you could type spinach nutrition into your favourite search engine. In Focused Search you could save the nutrition part as a helper phrase as its bound to be reused. So the next time you search you only need to type the name of the food, say stevia. As long as the helper phrase nutrition is selected it will be included as part of the new search but you don’t have to type it again.
STREAMLINE SEARCH - EXCLUDE A PHRASE
If for example you want to read about Dubrovnik in Croatia but do not want to sift through all the Game of Thrones stuff first, you could specify a helper phrase with a - sign: Dubrovnik -"game of thrones". This should exclude articles to do with Game of Thrones.
REPEAT OR LOAD PREVIOUS SEARCHES
Just like revisiting previously visited sites in your browser’s history, here you can additionally revisit your previous searches. They can then either be re-run or edited.