I’m writing this post because there doesn’t seem to be much instruction about how to search effectively from the url bar or omni-bar as the google folks call it.

The way its supposed to work is that if you type in a keyword for the search engine then the search query and hit enter, the search will execute using the search engine you specified.

so if you type 

“amazon.com Art of Rails” 
(note the space between amazon.com and the query)

into the omni bar then hit enter, your search will execute on Amazon.com.

To know that you’re doing it right, after typing in the keyword (amazon.com) and space, the url should look something like this

Inspired by Opera, I copied the way they make this easier on their users (the keyword for ebay is search.ebay.com for crying out loud).

Go to the options menu

and click on “manage”

now edit your keywords to one letter like so

now all you have to do to search is type

“a Art of rails”

instead of what you had to type before.