MacOS – Chrome: How to search a keyword with excluding specific keyword without changing setting every time

google-chromemacossearch

I would like to know how to search a keyword with excluding specific keyword without changing the Chrome setting every time. It's only once I will change the setting but I would like to avoid to use optional search it did not work to save the setting. Also, I don't want to see the keyword in the search box when to search.

Reason: I usually search technical word on internet but I just need OS X side but I will get other OS so I would like to exclude them.

Best Answer

I'm assuming you're asking about searching google from the chrome address bar.

You could simply type "-windows" along with your query to exlude any results with "windows" in it.

However, if you think you'll use this so often that globally excluding a keyword from all of your searches will be worth it, follow these steps:

  1. Menu>Settings (Menu is the icon with 3 horizontal lines in the top-right corner of chrome)

  2. Under "Search" click on "Manage search engines..."

  3. Under "Other Search Engines" add a new entry with name set to "google-foo", keyword to anything, and the URL to http://google.com/#q=%s%20%2Dfoo. (Replace 'foo' with the word you want to exclude.)

    Optional: You can specify other words to be excluded by adding sets of %20%2DexcludedWordHere. (The %20 and %2D are hex codes for space and -.)

  4. Hover over your new entry and click on "Make default"

Note: This will get you the behaviour you want, but I don't recommend step 4 because ALL searches from now on will exclude those words. Instead, set the keyword to 'wg' (or something else short) and use it as follows in the chrome address bar:

    wg query goes here

This will search google for "query goes here -foo" which will exclude all search results with the word "foo" in it.

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