Spice Up Google Search With Google Fx

Martin Brinkmann
Apr 7, 2009
Updated • Jun 11, 2017
Internet, Search
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5

Google Fx is a userscript that you may install in browser's supporting userscripts to modify the appearance and functionality of Google Search.

Google Search has always been displayed with a rather minimalistic design. While this serves several purposes, like offering distraction free web searching and fast loading times, it does fall a bit short for some users who prefer to access additional information right in the search interface.

Google Fx is a Greasemonkey Script which means it works in all compatible web browsers like Firefox or Google Chrome. The script turns the Google Search interface into an information powerhouse by adding information and features.

Note: Google FX has not been updated for years, and it won't work properly anymore because of this. An alternative is not available at this point in time unfortunately.

Visitors will immediately notice changes made to the Google Search interface after installation of the userscript. Icons have been added to the top header of the page, and the Google Suggest feature is available on all search forms automatically. Google Suggest displays related search terms in a menu below the original search term even if the user still types the search phrase.

Google Fx

The real changes and benefits of Google Fx become only visible on the Google Search results page. The header has been expanded to with direct links to various other search engines like Yahoo, Ask or Wikipedia which is excellent for research. All that is required is to click on one of the search engines listed there to run the search on that search engine as well.

There is even the possibility to perform the search on all of the 12 search engines that are listed at the same time. It does offer links to various Google Services that are not listed in the default Search interface,like a direct access to Translate.

The top right offers links to filter the search results by time or to search only in title, text, url or links. Everything is immediately clickable to provide fast access to the desired information. The Google search results have been spiced up as well. A thumbnail will be displayed for each search result that is giving users a visual impression of the listed websites. The usual features like accessing the cached version of the search result are still available.

The script displays the first 50 search results at once and add new entries at the bottom of the list once the user scrolls down to the end. Google Fx is an excellent Greasemonkey script for users who use Google on a regular basis and prefer to have access to additional information right on the search pages.

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Google Fx
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Comments

  1. ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
    Reply

    Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 4, 2012 at 7:57 pm
      Reply

      Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.

    2. Leonidas Burton said on September 4, 2023 at 4:51 am
      Reply

      I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
      http://www.google.com/saved

  2. VioletMoon said on August 16, 2023 at 5:26 pm
    Reply

    @Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!

  3. Karl said on August 17, 2023 at 10:36 pm
    Reply

    @Martin

    The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
    https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/

    Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.

  4. Anonymous said on August 25, 2023 at 11:44 am
    Reply

    Omg a badge!!!
    Some tangible reward lmao.

    It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.

  5. Scroogled said on August 25, 2023 at 10:57 pm
    Reply

    With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.

    1. lollmaoeven said on August 27, 2023 at 6:24 am
      Reply

      This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)

  6. El Duderino said on August 25, 2023 at 11:14 pm
    Reply

    Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.

    And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.

  7. John G. said on August 26, 2023 at 1:29 am
    Reply

    First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[

  8. Kalmly said on August 26, 2023 at 4:42 pm
    Reply

    Yes. Please. Fix the comments.

  9. Kim Schmidt said on September 3, 2023 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.

    Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.

    The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.

    If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.

    And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.

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