How to Search any Website or Blog Without Opening it

There may be some situations when you would like to search a specific website without actually opening it. The site may be slow and you would want to skip loading the homepage, finding out the search box, entering your query and then read the much desired article.

Well, there are a lot of blogs whom I follow on a regular basis. But i never search the blogs directly by visiting them one after another. Rather I use a central place to search all of them – Google.

Search any Website Using Google

If the website or blog where you want to search is popular and well known, then they would be certainly indexed at Google. You can use a simple site operator to search a particular website about a particular topic.

For example: If I want to check for published articles about Google docs at Ampercent, I would use the following search operator query

google docs site:ampercent.com

Here is how the results looks (example)

As you can see, the search result pages contains articles about “Google docs” from this site only. Using this technique you can search any website or blog with Google, as long as it is indexed.

Use a Site Search Bookmarklet

You can create a simple site search bookmarklet and use the bookmarklet to search the site without requiring to use any search box or opening the homepage over and over again.

For example: Just drag and drop the following bookmarklet in your Bookmarks toolbar.

Ampercent – Search

When you want to search this site just hit the bookmarklet and enter your search query in the pop up box that opens. Hit enter and you can directly load the search results in a new browser window.

A similar bookmarklet can be created for any blog or website (read tutorial).

Do you know any other method to search a specific website without actually opening it ? Do let us know through a comment.