Google Hacks

Hacking Google Search Forms

Build your own personal, task-specific Google search form.

If you want to do a simple search with Google, you don’t need anything but the standard Simple Search form (the Google home page). But if you want to craft specific Google searches you’ll be using on a regular basis or providing for others, you can simply put together your own personalized search form.

Start with your garden variety Google search form; something like this will do nicely:

<!-- Search Google -->
<form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/search">
<input type="text" name="q" size=31 maxlength=255 value="">
<input type="submit" name="sa" value="Search Google">
</form>
<!-- Search Google -->

This is a very simple search form. It takes your query and sends it directly to Google, adding nothing to it. But you can embed some variables to alter your search as needed. You can do this two ways: via hidden variables or by adding more input to your form.

Hidden Variables

As long as you know how to identify a search option in Google, you can add it to your search form via a hidden variable. The fact that it’s hidden just means that form users will not be able to alter it. They won’t even be able to see it unless they take a look at the source code. Let’s take a look at a few examples.

Tip

While it’s perfectly legal HTML to put your hidden variables anywhere between the opening and closing <form> tags, it’s rather tidy and useful to keep them all together after all the visible form fields. ...