How to search multiple (specified) sites in one query?

October 19, 2009 1:41 PM

I want to issue a single search engine query that limits itself to a list of say ten to twenty specified domains. How? Google, for example, allows a single site:blah.com query term that restricts to blah.com, but what if I need to to search for say, for the term widget, at all of the sites in the list blah.com, blag.org, blahblah.edu, etc? I could issue multiple queries, but I want a single homogenized list of results... Best marks will go to the query that can be used in an OpenSearch descriptor, or to a way of setting an OpenSearch descriptor to search several sites.
posted by blue_wardrobe to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Is there a reason the Google Custom Search Engine won't suit your needs? I think this is sort of the standard way to set this up.
posted by jessamyn at 1:44 PM on October 19, 2009

With google you can do this with -inurl:

your search string -inurl:(domain1|domain2|domain3)

I don't think opensearch has an equivalent
posted by Lanark at 1:48 PM on October 19, 2009

Another way of writing what Lanark said:

searchterms moresearchterms site:domain1.com | site:domain2.com | site:domain3.com

The pipe character (|) represents OR in boolean logic. It's a good way to limit a search to a handful of sites but more than five or six would be pretty cumbersome.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 1:53 PM on October 19, 2009

Rollyo is built for your specific purpose. They call them Searchrolls.
posted by brock at 2:06 PM on October 19, 2009

Actually that should be

your search string inurl:(domain1|domain2|domain3)

inurl will restrict search to urls that contain those strings
-inurl will restrict search to urls that don't contain those strings

e.g.
beatles -inurl:(wikipedia|amazon)
posted by Lanark at 2:31 PM on October 19, 2009

To do this on Bing would use
searchstring (site:foo.com OR site:bar.com)

The opensearch descriptor URL template would just have something like template="http://bing.com/search?q={searchstring}+%28site%3Afoo.com+OR+site%3Abar.com%29"
posted by Diddly at 2:49 PM on October 19, 2009