How I forced Google Search to give me the results I want and can trust again – it’s easy

I spend a big part of each working day struggling with search engines. A lot of my questions are technology-related: How does this feature work? What does that error code mean? Which apps are compatible with the new hardware platform or OS version I’m testing right now?

There’s usually an authoritative answer to each of those questions, documented by the engineers and designers who wrote the code or built the device I’m working with. But good luck finding those answers, as modern search engines now insist on flooding the results page with AI-based summaries, ads, and links to enthusiast videos, third-party vendor content, and low-quality AI slop. (These days, any search for anything related to Windows turns up a depressing amount of useless, SEO-optimized sludge.)

How custom search shortcuts changed the way I work

This became an ongoing headache as I researched my latest book, “Windows 11 Inside Out, Second Edition.” (See the end of this post for more details about that project.) After yet another frustrating search session, I finally worked out a solution. Instead of handing my search terms to Google and waiting to be disappointed, I created custom shortcuts that restrict the search scope to the authoritative sites I’m looking for, plus a handful of reliable third-party sources.

For the book, my two primary sources were Microsoft Support and Microsoft Learn. The latter (which used to be called Microsoft Docs) is Redmond’s official repository of technical documentation for everything the company makes. It contains a staggering amount of information, categorized by product, and it can be difficult to navigate. As I’ve learned over many years of working with Microsoft products, some of the most interesting technical details about Windows features can pop up in unexpected places — buried in documentation that was written for server administrators, hardware makers, or app developers, for example.

Also: The best and worst AI for your privacy – and how each handles your data

I also know that there’s a wealth of reliable information on some third-party sites that aren’t part of Microsoft.com, including GitHub, Super User, the Stack Exchange network, and even a handful of well-managed Subreddits.

So I built two shortcuts — one that searches only official Microsoft sites, and a second that searches an expanded list of curated sites.

My solution worked exceptionally well, as this example shows. I wanted to read Microsoft’s privacy policy for its Copilot chatbot. Here’s what I got from a basic Google search.

Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNET

Nearly the entire page is taken up by “sponsored results” — ads, that is, including one from Microsoft. The rest of the page is given over to the start of an AI summary. Scrolling down didn’t help. That just gave me “People also ask” and “Find related products and services” plus, for some reason, a random link about Copilot privacy policies for students at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. (Go Vols!)

Here’s what my custom search shortcut returned for the same query.

That’s much more useful. And it looks surprisingly like the Google search results we all remember from pre-AI days. A clean list of links, uncluttered by ads and machine-generated junk.

After building those shortcuts, I realized that this technique works for any field of specialized knowledge. Assemble your own curated list of trusted sites and build a shortcut that restricts results to just those sources. Do that for your specialty and you can say goodbye to low-quality content, ads, and AI summaries.

How to create a custom search shortcut

A custom search shortcut consists of three parts: a descriptive name, the shortcut you use to trigger the custom search, and the URL itself, with a placeholder at the end for you to add your own query.

To get started, open the Search Engines page in Chrome or Edge settings:

chrome://settings/searchEngines

edge://settings/searchEngines

In Chrome, look for the “Site search” heading and click Add. In Edge, click “Add search engine.” That opens a dialog box like this one. I’ve filled it in using the settings for my Microsoft Official search shortcut.

Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNET

(The Edge version of this dialog contains the same boxes and performs the same function but has a slightly different label, “Add search engine.”)

Fill in the boxes as follows:

• Name: Enter the description you want to see at the left side of the address bar when you use this shortcut.
• Shortcut: Enter the combination of letters you want to use to trigger the custom search. Keep it short but easy to remember. For the Microsoft Official shortcut, I use mso. For the Microsoft Extended shortcut, I use msx.
• URL: Enter the search URL with filters and %s at the end, as a placeholder that you’ll fill in with your search terms. This is what I used for that shortcut:
  https://www.google.com/search?q=(site:learn.microsoft.com OR site:microsoft.com)+%s

Pay careful attention to the syntax. Any stray spaces will cause the shortcut to fail. Click Add to save the custom search shortcut.

To use it for a search, enter the keyboard shortcut you defined, followed by the spacebar or Tab. That changes the label on the left side of the address bar to let you know you’re doing a custom search. Type your search terms and then press Enter.

Some recommended search shortcuts

To get you started, I’ve put together a list that includes my Microsoft-focused shortcuts plus equivalents for Apple and Linux. Feel free to customize the shortcuts and the list of included sites all you want.

Microsoft official

Microsoft extended

Microsoft developer

Apple official

Apple extended

Linux official

Linux extended

Why Google?

These shortcuts work in either Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge (or any compatible Chromium-based browser) but will behave differently if you change the search engine from Google to Bing or DuckDuckGo. Those sites don’t support multi-domain search filtering in the same way Google does, so the custom search results might appear different if you try to make that switch. But you’re welcome to try!

Announcing Windows 11 Inside Out, Second Edition

My new book, “Windows 11 Inside Out, Second Edition” will be available soon. I worked on it for six solid months, and it’s a massive revision that anyone who made it all the way to the end of this post will appreciate. It’s available for preorder from Amazon now, and I’ll have links to other purchase sites on my website once they’re available.

Ed Bott

Senior Contributing Editor

Award-winning tech journalist and Microsoft Windows expert

See full bio