With all the recent talk of DuckDuckGo, I’m surprised that no one is mentioning the search engine’s best feature — !Bangs. They’re modifiers that let you easily search for content on specific sites. Input the query “lifefactory !a” and DucDuckGo will take you to a search results page on Amazon for the term “lifefactory.” If you enter “hearthstone !yt” it’ll forward you to a search of YouTube for the term “hearthstone.”

I use !Bangs all the time. The feature makes it a seamless experience to move from your browser’s address bar to the information you’re looking for without having to visit DuckDuckGo as an intermediary. I use !a and !yt as I mentioned above, but I also use !g for Google, !i for Google Images, and !w for Wikipedia.

DuckDuckGo currently has over 6,000 !Bangs available and are adding more all the time. They even have a form available if you’d like to suggest a new one. If you’ve made the switch to DuckDuckGo, I suggest becoming familiar with their list of !Bangs, They’ll speed up your web searches and help you get to what you’re looking for quickly. And if you’ve only considered making the switch, this is the kind of feature that might push you over the edge.