Search Box that Goes to Google

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What is a Search Box that Goes to Google?

A search box that goes to Google is a search box on a website that just opens Google with the site: operator applied to the website's domain. In other words, it means the website doesn't have a search engine of its own and depends on Google to search its content. It's similar to having a search engine that is powered by Google.

This can be problematic as Google's index doesn't necessarily contain all the content of the website, nor will Google provide any method to sort the results that only the website would know about. For example, if a social media uses Google as its search engine, you won't be able to sort posts by number of comments because Google doesn't provide such feature.

A webpage, the navbar logo reads "Discuit," next to a search box and a login and create account buttons. On the left pane: Home, Communities, Guidelines, a d a list of "Communities," namely: AskDiscuit, Discuit, DiscuitMeta, funny, gaming, general, movies, music, news, pictures, programming, and technology. On the main pane a photo post to the Baking community by user jmoldy, posted 3 weeks ago titled Lemon muffins, showing 12 muffins. It has 6 comments. On the right pane two panels, one titled Community rules and the other titled Moderators. A single moderator is listed: PM_ME_KITTEN_TOES. Links on the right pane: About, Terms, Privacy, Guidelines, Docs, Contact, copyright 2024 Discuit.
As of 2025-04-07, Discuit has a search box that goes to Google. Observe how there is no indication that the search box goes to Google. It looks just like a normal search box. You'll only notice it goes to Google after you try to search for something and you have already gone to Google.
Written by Noel Santos.

About the Author

I'm a self-taught Brazilian programmer graduated in IT from a FATEC. In a world of increasingly complex and essential computers, I decided to use my technical expertise in hardware, desktop applications, and web technologies to create an informative resource to make PC's easier to understand.

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