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switch search engine

We regularly find and share various search tools that allow you to discover new search experiences and become search-savvier. Today's Firefox addon is a great example of how tools can make searching much more fun.

Boounce is a new tool (which is still in beta) that is aimed at making you more search efficient. It lets you easily jump between various search engines and discover more topical search databases. Here's the overview of its features:

1. Easily Jump To Other Search Engines

This option of the addon works similarly to the Greasemonkey scripts that allow you to jump from Google results to other search engines which I once shared. But Boounce supports both Google and Bing. In essence, once you search Google, it will invite you to perform the same search on other search engines:

switch search engine

Each new search will open in a new tab.

2. Easily Compare Search Results (Google & Bing)

If you "boounce" from Google to Bing (or vice versa), you will have an option to hide the duplicate entries:

toggle search engine

If you choose to show the hidden entries, they will be highlighted in green:

toggle search engine

3. Quickly Search From The Toolbar

The addon comes equipped with a handy toolbar that lets you quickly perform and search (as well as switch between search engines) from the top of your browser. It can be toggled on and off using the tiny icon in the address bar.

The most useful thing about the toolbar is that it is very flexible: you can switch between the "search engine groups" based on your query. For example, these are the following search groups by default:

  • "Images" search group contains Google Images, Flickr, Stock Images, etc;
  • "Downloads" search group lets you quickly "boounce" between download.cnet.com, downloadweb.org, megadownload.net and other app-related search engines, etc:
toggle search engine

To discover more search groups, just start typing in the "Search groups" field:

search engine switching

All the search engines the tool operates can be found here [No Longer Available].

Depending on the search group, the search options may slightly differ as well. For example, if you are looking for "jobs" you may be interested in restricting results by territory, so the toolbar will add the "zip code" field if you switch to the "Jobs" search group:

search engine switching

Another important thing to mention about the toolbar is that it is dynamic. It will change when you use any topical search engine and suggest you more search options to click through. For example, if you search IMDB, the toolbar will suggest trying your search on Yahoo! Movies, Metacritic, etc. Moreover, it will automatically include your search term to save your time:

search engine switching

The addon options let you turn on and off almost any of the above features including:

  • Google and Bing integration;
  • Identification of duplicate results; etc:
switch search engine

Looks like a cool search tool! What are your thoughts?

One more important note here is that the tool claims to be community-driven: recommended search engines in the toolbar are picked based on the user behavior. That being said, we can hope that the tool will get better and better when more people start using it.