Search for content only within your bookmarks

[pachame13]

I wonder if we can search content within all our favorites/bookmarks as if we were using Google just for our favorite sites and not the entire web. You see, I have dozens of specific library sites already bookmarked that I would like to search for content.
Best Regards.

[jscher2000]

Do you mean you would like to conduct an up-to-date web search (e.g., Bing, Google) and get results only for a specific set of sites? Both Bing and Google allow you to add a restriction to your search, for example:

site:windowssecrets.com OR site:jeffersonscher.com phuket - Google Search

(site:windowssecrets.com OR site:jeffersonscher.com) phuket - Bing

Building a search that properly searches across numerous domains probably would be a chore, as simple testing is frustrating and confusing. But it's probably worth a try. (Connecting the search directly to your favorites certainly would be convenient but adds another level of complexity...)

[pachame13]

Thank you, jscher200, for the prompt reply!
I was aware of the syntax you mention and also of the custom search that iGoogle provides which is the closer to my needs that I could get. But, yet, there's got to be a way to restrict my search to my bookmarked sites.
The annoyance with the custom search is that you have to go, edit, and add any new site that you bookmark so that the custom search engine is updated. Otherwise, is a cool service. Another one I tried to use is historious which captures your bookmarks through a toolbar button but you then have to log in their site to perform a search.
Thanks again and welcome any other thoughts you come up with.

[bignutt47]

The easiest way I have found to search for bookmarks is to:

1. Open the Favorites folder.
2. Click Search in the tool bar. This opens Search Companion in the left panel.
3. Click All files and folders.
4. Enter your search keyword(s) in A word or phrase in the file: and then click Search.

[pachame13]

Thank you, Arthur!
I'm beginning to feel a bit frustrated because, either I don´t do it right or I cannot properly express what I need. I tried your suggestion and it seemed to just search for a word within the Favorites' links names, not in the actual sites.
Best regards, Alberto.

[Fofer]

Have no fear, pachame13, I understand exactly what you're asking for, as I've been searching for an ideal solution for this for a long time now, as well. I'm surprised there isn't more of a public desire for it. I've collected thousands of bookmarks over the years, many of which don't have a descriptive title, nearly all of which I haven't taken the time to "tag" or "label" (or even put into a descriptive folder,) so searching through them is pretty much impossible! The list just goes on and on and on and I rarely, if ever, can find the needle in the haystack.

I'm surprised none of the popular bookmarking sharing/sync sites (like del.icio.us or Xmarks) implemented this. That would have sold me on their utility a long time ago.

That said, I have found two sources that make it work.

The first is from Yahoo: http://bookmarks.yahoo.com/
It's been around for awhile, but hasn't really evolved much.

And the second is from Google: https://www.google.com/bookmarks/l
Seems like they recently beefed this up, integrated it better with Google Web History, and merged bookmarks with search results that you "star." When I checked this service last year or so, I was surprised that it didn't search page content, but now, after testing it today, I see that it does. The search results display could be beefed up a little (there's no familiar blurb underneath with highlighted words) but it does, in fact, work.

You can import your existing bookmarks into either (or both) of those, while still keeping them private to your account (ie: not publicly shared to the world.) Then when you perform a search on either site, it will not only search via URL, bookmark name, tag... but also the site content.

Once you pick one of these, you could use a handy bookmarklet so adding new bookmarks is easy:
http://help.yahoo.com/tutorials/bk/bk/bk_add2.html
https://www.google.com/bookmarks/l#!...okmarks&op=add

Anyway, I hope this helps!

[New Daddy]

I'm adding a reply for posterity's sake.

I had exactly the same question as the OP, and that's why I ended up on this thread, obviously.

What I've found is historio.us. It does exactly what the OP is asking for. It is true that you are supposed to add a new site to historio.us (or "historify" it) every time you come across a web page that you want to be part of your search later. But historio.us also has an import function which you can use to export all your current bookmarks into historio.us. It will take a few minutes before historio.us parses your bookmark file and indexes its contents, but after that it will search just the contents of your bookmarked links.