Multisearch - searching with many search engines

[Marcin Bogdanowicz]

Does anyone happen to come across a workflow or a feature in Alfred allowing to search a query with multiple search engines at the same time? So in other words, normal searching for a word or phrase (through Alfred of course) would result in opening as many tabs in default browser as one would type keywords of search engines in an Alfred dash.

 

In my view it's so usefull a feature that I'm sure somebody has already thought about it. I personally used to use such group searching for online shopping or looking for an e-book or audiobook. 

[dfay]

It came up in the comments here - http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/4700-searchio-auto-suggestion-from-search-engines-in-different-languages/ - and ended up getting nixed....but that involved putting the output from a bunch of search engines into a script filter.  You just want to open a bunch of tabs with the same search term on different search engines, right?

 

This is actually very easy to do - here is a workflow to get you started.  Basically you have a keyword which gets your query and outputs it to multiple Open URL actions.  The Open URL object in the workflow includes the documentation on how to figure out a search URL.  Alfred's Open URL actions also let you browsers other than the default if you prefer.

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6601556/Alfred/Multisearch.alfredworkflow

Edited October 7, 2014 by dfay

[Vero]

Does anyone happen to come across a workflow or a feature in Alfred allowing to search a query with multiple search engines at the same time? So in other words, normal searching for a word or phrase (through Alfred of course) would result in opening as many tabs in default browser as one would type keywords of search engines in an Alfred dash.

 

In my view it's so usefull a feature that I'm sure somebody has already thought about it. I personally used to use such group searching for online shopping or looking for an e-book or audiobook. 

 

dfay has provided a good example workflow You can also take a look at the workflow examples, which you can access in the Workflow preferences by clicking on the + at the bottom of the sidebar and choosing "Examples".

 

The "Should I watch this movie?" workflow will show you how you can launch a search for a movie title in your default browser to imdb.com and rottentomatoes.com, as well as YouTube in Chrome so that you can watch the movie trailer (useful if you don't have Flash otherwise installed on your Mac). From dfay's example or the movie workflow, you can replace or modify the objects to launch the searches you want

[Marcin Bogdanowicz]

thank you so much dfay and Vero, you are awesome, especially dfay deserves credits for his link to absolutely accurate workflow!

 

By the way, I think it would be useful for others if you, Vero, pasted in the link to the workflow you've mentioned. It sounds very like that of dfay's example, but may have also a specific ring of relevance for somebody. Perhaps it sounds like asking to much, but please understand that for a Newbie like me the title of a workflow is sort of a mystery when it comes to localise it as much as many other things with Alfred app.

[Marcin Bogdanowicz]

With hindsight, I should ask you for providing a link to place where one can browser for a workflow, rather than asking for a direct link to a workflow. At any rate, to my surprise I've googled it very easily, and here you go:

 

a place where you can search for a workflow: http://www.alfredforum.com/forum/3-share-your-workflows/ 

 

the workflow mentioned by Vero: http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/1101-should-i-watch-this-movie-with-google-suggest/?hl=%2Bshould+%2Bwatch+%2Bthis+%2Bmovie

Edited October 9, 2014 by Marcin Bogdanowicz