THE WEB IS a big place, which is why we need search engines. But given that virtually every popular search engine now heavily weights its top results in favor of its own products, services, and ads, it's gotten surprisingly difficult to really find the information you're looking for.
Luckily, these browser extensions for Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox take your searches to the next level, making them smarter and faster, so you don't have to spend so much time sifting through ads and irrelevant information to find good search results.
From digging deeper into Wikipedia to querying multiple search engines at once, you should be able to find something of use here. Note that the new Microsoft Edge browser is based on Chromium, like Google Chrome is, so you can install any extension from the Chrome Web Store.
Search the Current Site
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Full marks to this particular browser add-on for one of the most straightforward and descriptive names we've come across: Search the Current Site does exactly that, running your query of choice on every page across the domain you're currently visiting (such as www.wired.com). While your browser lets you search through the single web page you're currently viewing if you tap Ctrl+F (Windows) or Cmd+F (macOS), this extension is a far more comprehensive and customizable way of getting results from one particular website.
It's likely that a lot of your web searches are going to lead you to Wikipedia anyway, so you can speed up the process by querying the online encyclopedia right from the address bar in Chrome or Edge—just type "wiki" followed by your search keywords. The extension does more than that though, also enabling you to look up terms from inside Wikipedia and on the web at large through the right-click context menu. It works with hundreds of languages that Wikipedia supports and is a must if you spend a lot of time hunting through its pages.
Wolfram|Alpha
PHOTOGRAPH: DAVID NIELDGoogle is fine, up to a point, but Wolfram|Alpha beats it in all kinds of areas—from mathematical equations and algebra to cultural history and entertainment. It does conversions and calculations, physics queries, and data about engineering, and can also dig into information on transportation, the economy, and health. There's plenty more to explore besides everything we've already mentioned, and with this extension set up, you can get at the vast array of features offered by Wolfram|Alpha with a single click.
The Simple Search extension offers a reminder of what web searches used to look like: If you run a search using Bing or Google with Simple Search enabled, you'll get a plain and uncluttered list of results, without any of the distractions of ads, info boxes, and sponsored links. The simplified search results appear on top of the standard results, so if you want to see the original page, it's only a click away—otherwise enjoy searching the web the old-fashioned way.
TinEye Reverse Image Search
PHOTOGRAPH: DAVID NIELDTinEye is one of those essential resources that should be in the toolkit of every serious web searcher. It scours the internet for pictures, or rather one specific picture that you provide—it can help you spot scams and fakes, work out the origin of an image, direct you towards different sizes of a certain picture, and more. This official TinEye extension makes it easier for you to launch image searches, via a new entry that gets added to the right-click context menu in your browser. Sure, in Chrome you can search for images by right-clicking on them as well, but this gives you another—and sometimes more useful—option.
Sometimes just one search engine isn't enough—Search All enables you to query Google, Bing, Amazon, Wikipedia, eBay, Twitter, YouTube, and any other search engine or searchable portal you want to add. It's easy to switch between the search options you've configured, and the extension makes it straightforward to focus your searches on shopping sites, image databases, video and movie sites, recipe portals, or whatever else you're particularly interested in. The add-on comes with some useful customizations too.
Multiple Tabs Search
PHOTOGRAPH: DAVID NIELDMultiple Tabs Search is a web search extension for power users: Essentially, it lets you run multiple searches at once, together with any necessary parameters you want to add (to limit results to a certain site, for example). It can really speed up your searching if you're got a lot of queries to get through, and you can even remove certain sites (such as YouTube or Facebook) from the list of matches if necessary. The add-on can also be used to open a list of URLs at the same time in successive tabs, making it an even more useful utility.
InvisibleHand
InvisibleHand is a search tool that runs automatically in the background for you, springing into life whenever it finds the product you're currently looking at for a cheaper price somewhere else on the web. It can also load up coupons relevant to the site that you're currently visiting, just in case you can get some money off, and there's also the option to set up price alerts on particular items that you're interested in getting—potentially saving you hours of manually searching the web and clicking around to find the best deals online.
Giphy
PHOTOGRAPH: DAVID NIELDNever be stuck for a GIF again by adding the Giphy extension right to your browser toolbar. No matter what the occasion, you can save yourself a substantial amount of searching time by loading up this add-on and typing in some keywords—you can then copy the URL link to your chosen GIF, or drag and drop it straight into the web page you're on (your reactions will never have been so fast). The extension's pop-up window also showcases GIFs that are trending and proving popular, in case you're stuck for some inspiration.
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