As Google+ becomes more popular you find yourself needing to search for content — perhaps to see if anyone is publicly commenting on a topic you are interested in.
Until now I have been using the Google+ Search (http://gplussearch.com), however today I stumbled across an excellent post from Bill Handy allowing you to add a custom Search Engine directly to Chrome. You are not really adding a new engine, simply using Google with a few parameters to narrow the search to the Google+ site. Still a fabulous find in my view.
- Within Chrome click on the Spanner icon, top right, then Preferences
- In the ‘Basics’ tab click ‘Manage Search Engines’
- Scroll to the bottom of the list and complete the three boxes as follows:
Search Engine: Google+
Keyword: G+
URL: {google:baseURL}search?q=site:plus.google.com inurl:posts/* %s
- Press Return then close down the preferences.
Now, goto the Location bar, type g+, press the tab key and type your query.
Press Return and you will contain your search to Google+ public content :-)
(If you prefer, you can make the Keyword G+ anything you wish to type in the location bar before you press the tab key)
I used release 12 of Chrome to do this; earlier versions have the ‘Manage Search Engines’ in a slightly different location in ’Preferences’ but the essence is the same.