How to automate 4 different web searches for the same query?

January 27, 2013 4:47 PM

I'm learning a language (Hungarian) and I look up new words in a bunch of websites (2 dictionaries, Google images inside of Google Translate, Forvo.com). In general, I just copy and paste each word into the URLs, but there must be some way of clicking a button and searching all four websites at once. Is there?

Here are the huge URLs, all searching for a generic search term, XXXXX:

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=hu&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.hu%2Fsearch%3Fq%3DXXXXX%26num%3D10%26hl%3Dhu%26tbo%3Dd%26site%3Dimghp%26tbm%3Disch%26sout%3D1%26biw%3D1075%26bih%3D696

http://www.forvo.com/word/XXXXX/#hu

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=hu&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fhu.wiktionary.org%2Fwiki%2FXXXXX

http://szotar.sztaki.hu/en/search?fromlang=hun&tolang=eng&searchWord=XXXXX&langcode=en&u=0&langprefix=en%2F&searchMode=WORD_PREFIX&viewMode=full&ignoreAccents=0

One thing that *may* prove tricky is that Hungarian uses some nonstandard characters, like ű and ő.

posted by sdis to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Response by poster: Ick...those URLs don't look so good. Here are some prettier ones:

Google Images+Translate

Forvo

Wiktionary+Google Translate

Szotar Hungarian-English
posted by sdis at 4:53 PM on January 27, 2013

I'm not sure how to search all four sites at once, but I use Google Chrome's custom search option for this exact purpose:

1. Go into Chrome settings
2. Click "Manage search engines..."
3. Scroll all the way down
4. Enter whatever you want in "Add a new search engine" (e.g., "Szotar")
5. Enter a short keyword in "Keyword" (e.g., "szo")
6. Paste one of those long URLs with %s in place of XXXXX (e.g., "http://szotar.sztaki.hu/en/search?fromlang=hun&tolang=eng&searchWord=%s&langcode=en&u=0&langprefix=en%2F&searchMode=WORD_PREFIX&viewMode=full&ignoreAccents=0")

Then you can just type "szo macska" or whatever into the address bar.
posted by theodolite at 5:03 PM on January 27, 2013

Having learned Hungarian myself, I can only tell you that almost all of these sites are lacking in one way or another.

So while I don't know how to help you with this specific problem, I would very strongly suggest you get a really great English/Hungarian and Hungarian/English dictionary. The very best of these are published by Akadémiai Kiadó in my opinion. Unfortunately, they publish several editions. The best "everyday" ones are newly titled "Bluebird Angol-Magyar Szótár" (or the other way around), and each one has about 30,000 "words" and 20,000 phrases. Because Hungarian is not an Indo-European language, words don't match up as nicely from English as French ones would, for instance. The nice thing about these dictionaries is that they're well-designed so that the phrases give you a better indication of usage than you might guess on your own, or that you'll get from the online sources.

They also have a HUGE volume of each - I'm guessing three or four times as big. But those are pretty expensive, which wouldn't deter me. But getting them home in my suitcase would.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 7:21 PM on January 27, 2013

Best answer: I found an answer! iMacros!

I put a guide up here, if anyone lands here looking for the same thing.
posted by sdis at 8:34 AM on January 28, 2013 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: PS: Thanks for the shortcut trick and the dictionary suggestions!
posted by sdis at 8:35 AM on January 28, 2013