Dave Taylor answers free tech support questions about a wide variety of business and technical topics, including blogging, iphone help, ipod help, AdSense, MySpace, Sony PSP help, Mp3 players, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Linux, SEO, Mac OS X, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

What are Internet Explorer search prefixes?

Dave, a friend of mine was showing off his superior knowledge of Microsoft Internet Explorer (though he, of course, called it "IE" and, once, "MSIE") and really amazed me when in the Address bar he typed in something that caused it to give us a stock quote for the specified ticker symbol. How did he do that?

Dave's Answer:

I can totally understand your not wanting to go back to this "friend" of yours to ask how he pulled up a stock quote, but fortunately the solution is pretty simple if you know that what we're talking about are what Microsoft's team calls IE Search Prefixes. Your first step is to install this little script.

Then, to get a stock quote, for example, type quote msft in the MSIE address box, then press Return (or Enter, depending on your keyboard). To learn more about a specific movie, say, Casablanca, try movie casablanca instead.

Here's a full table of IE Search Prefixes, according to the MSN Search team's Weblog:

Prefix	Alternate	Query Target	Example
define	definition, dictionary	MSN Search, web search with definition	define alpaca
encarta		MSN Search, Encarta search	encarta history of china
images	image	MSN Search, image search	images corvette
kb		Microsoft Knowledge Base	kb microsoft word
ms		Microsoft.com site	ms windows xp
movies	movie	MSN Movies	movies the incredibles
msdn		Microsoft MSDN	msdn cocreateguid
msn		MSN Search, web search	msn chicken fried rice
music		MSN Music	music peter gabriel
news		MSN Search, news search	news iraq
shop	shopping	MSN Shopping	shop digital camera
quote	stockquote	MSN Money, stock quote	quote msft
syn	thesaurus	Encarta thesaurus	syn vanguard

Us Mac OS X users don't have to miss out on the fun either: if you want to have all these nifty prefixes available within the popular Apple Safari browser, just install the $12 Saft utility, which adds lots of cool features to Safari in addition to simple Address box prefix shortcuts.

Saft does include some nice default prefixes too, particularly if you don't want to keep going to Microsoft's sites for information. For example, the IE Search Prefix "movie" takes you to MSN Movies, whereas Saft's prefix "imdb" takes you to Amazon's Internet Movie Database (and, yes, you can easily modify it so that typing 'movie' would work too).

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Comments

In your article "What are Internet Explorer search prefixes?" FireFox can do all this too and with out any scripts needing to be downloaded and installed!

Tell the world to drop IE and get FireFox.

Posted by: Mike at April 7, 2005 1:05 AM

Well, yeah, if people would just wholesale leave the world of MSIE, I think the Web would be a better place and, frankly, we might have a bit less virus and spyware problems. But ...

Posted by: Dave Taylor at April 7, 2005 5:40 AM

Hi Dave,

When I save a favourite WEB location, at the left hand side of the URL prefix there might be an icon which identifies the WEB site. However,not all WEB sites have this type of identifier. I am running Internet Explorer 7 within Vista Home Premium on a Toshiba Satellite mobile computer.

I have two questions:

1.) Why do these unique icons suddenly transform into the "boring" default Internet Explorer type? Can I prevent it from happening? It is also weird that this happens on my Home Page Tabs intermittently. If I close IE7 and then start it again I usually regain the special identifier icons associated with the unique WEB site such as the one associated with Yahoo! (Y!). The analogy for this icon is one that serves as a trademark.

2.) Can I tell before adding a WEB location to my favourites or adding it to one of my home page tabs whether there should be a unique "trademark" icon?

Your help would be so much appreciated Dave.

Howie

Posted by: Howard Needleman at June 11, 2007 8:52 PM

i don't seem to find an ie anywhere, where do i find it? i need to go back to my sbc global .net account as i am paying for it.this will bypass my home phones! asap, thanks again

Posted by: william kaminga at July 31, 2008 10:14 AM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!