Help:External searches

This page is a modified copy of MediaWiki.org's Public Domain Help Pages, which can be freely copied into fresh wiki installations and/or distributed with MediaWiki software. See Help:Contents for an overview of all pages.

It is possible to create an external searches of a topic using key words using a template.

For example, this is something that would work for Google:

<span style="border: 1px solid #CCD5DB;">[[Image:GoogleIcon.PNG]] [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q={{{1|Wiki}}}&btnG=Search&meta= {{{1|Google}}}]</span>
==Usage==
Allows to establish a link to a search query at the Google search engine:
<div style="display:table; width:auto;"><pre>
{{Google|Term1+Term2+Term3}}
</pre></div>
[[Category:Template|Google]]
</noinclude>

The usage is very simple and easy to use. {{Google|firstTerm+Second+etc}}

It is also possible to do phrases by using %22Term1+Term2+etc%22

• External searches are useful where an article requires certain keywords to make an effective search.
• For the editor it allows making searches of web more quickly and painlessly.

Other applications of the template include searching Forums, for bug reports of the same type for software development wikis where the wiki and forum work together.

Note: Wikipedia has an interwiki prefix with a similar effect, so you can link to google results with [[Google:firstTerm+Second+etc]], although templates are still useful for linking other search engines.