If you missed the article on 10 reasons to use the duck search engine, or the one on configuring duck duck go’s settings, I highly recommend you go back and check them out for some background. This article will focus on using bangs in the duck duck go search engine.

What are Bangs?

You are probably scratching your head and wondering what a bang is like I did when I first encountered them. You can think of a bang like a shortcut that does a search on a website of your choice.

As a quick example, pretend you’re wanting to search for computers on Amazon. Most of the time, people will type in something like “computers amazon” into a search engine. Some will even go to Amazon and either browse or search for computers. By the power of bangs, this process becomes even quicker!

The Beginning of the Bang

A bang search shortcut starts with an exclamation point. The duck calls this a bang. Now you know why these search shortcuts are called bangs. During the editing process, printers and comic book creators had various names for punctuation symbols to make it quicker to notate punctuation or to call out a better idea for what punctuation was needed. If you happen to be grammatically obsessed—uh, I mean, curious—find out more about punctuation slang. Now that we have all the explanations out of the way, lets use the example of searching for a computer on Amazon and turn it into a bang, thereby saving you time in the process.

Your First Bang

Either go to the duck search engine, or if you have set the duck as your default search engine in your browser, just go to the address bar and do the following:

• type “bang” without the quotes, followed by the letter A. Case is not important.
• Next, type a space followed by the word “computer”.
• Press ENTER.

Here is what this would look like written out:

!a computer

Once you do that, you will not only be taken to Amazon, but the search will automatically be done for you. Now simply browse through the results.

More About Bangs

As of this writing, there are more than 12 thousand bang search shortcuts ready to be used by you. The duck has had bangs since 2008. Below, I will include some interesting examples of these bangs to help you get a feel for how cool this is. You are also able to suggest new bangs, or even submit your own bangs if you cannot find one that works for you. Generally, you can type something similar to what you want to use, such as “bang a” or “bang amazon”. The duck will usually figure out what you mean, and then just do the search for you on the appropriate website.

Example Bangs

You can get a categorized list of all bang shortcuts if you’d like. Now, here are a few more of interest:

• Spotify: !spy we built this city
• NCOMPETECH: !incomp future
• Google Play Music: !gpmusic eko
• youTube: !yt thundersnow
• Project Gutenberg: !gutenberg: The Historians’ History of the World in Twenty-Five Volumes, Volume 7
• Fanfiction: !fanfiction Superman
• Google books: !GB Strange Attractors
• Amazon Kindle: !kindle hurricane Andrew
• National Weather Service: !nws atlanta
• The Weather Channel: !wc atlanta, GA
• Google News: !gnews current events
• Indeed jobs: !jobs customer service
• WorkATRemote: !workatremote video transcription
• Ticket Master: !ticketmaster piano guys
• Stub Hub: !tickets piano guys
• Calorie King: !carbs cheese burger
• MIT: !mitvid particle robots
• Consumer Reports: !crep robotic
• DogPedia: !dogpedia hotspot
• Bible Gateway: !bible John 3:16
• Booking: !booking atlanta, ga
• Microsoft Store: !mstore surface
• Is There Any Deal: !isthereanydeal HP Spectre

Wow! This just barely scratches the surface. I certainly encourage you to try some yourself and browse the more than 12 thousand bangs. I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief tour of duck bangs. Until next time…

Qapla!