OpenSearch is a collection of technologies that allow the publishing of search results in a format suitable for syndication and

aggregation Aggregation may refer to: Business and economics * Aggregation problem (economics) * Purchasing aggregation, the joining of multiple purchasers in a group purchasing organization to increase their buying power * Community Choice Aggregation, the ...

. Introduced in 2005, it is a way for websites and

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

s to publish search results in a standard and accessible format. OpenSearch was developed by Amazon.com subsidiary A9 and the first version, OpenSearch 1.0, was unveiled by Jeff Bezos at the ''O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference'' on 15 March 2005. Draft versions of OpenSearch 1.1 were released during September and December 2005. The OpenSearch specification is licensed by A9 under the

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Support

Web browsers that support OpenSearch include

Safari A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an importa ...

, Microsoft Edge, Firefox and

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS ...

. Mozilla have indicated that they will deprecate OpenSearch search addons in favour of WebExtensions search addons. This will not affect the ability to manually add an opensearch engine from a website As of December 5, 2019, search engine add-ons for Firefox that are powered by OpenSearch have been removed from Mozilla Add-ons.

Design

OpenSearch consists of: # OpenSearch Description files: XML files that identify and describe a search engine. # OpenSearch Query Syntax: describe where to retrieve the search results # OpenSearch

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...

(in OpenSearch 1.0) or OpenSearch Response (in OpenSearch 1.1): format for providing open search results. # OpenSearch Aggregators: Sites that can display OpenSearch results. # OpenSearch "Auto-discovery" to signal the presence of a search plugin link to the user and the link embedded in the header of HTML pages OpenSearch Description Documents list search result responses for the given website/tool. Version 1.0 of the specification only allowed one response, in RSS format; however, version 1.1 provides support for multiple responses, which may be in any format. RSS and Atom are the only ones formally supported by OpenSearch aggregators, however other types, such as HTML are perfectly acceptable. * Auto-discovery of an OpenSearch Description Document is available from both HTML and Atom or RSS feed documents via

Link relations A link relation is a descriptive attribute attached to a hyperlink in order to define the type of the link, or the relationship between the source and destination resources. The attribute can be used by automated systems, or can be presented to a ...

in the form of for Atom feeds or for RSS feeds and HTML documents. * OpenSearch Description Document must be placed on a web server of the same domain. * OpenSearch Description Documents must be served with the application/opensearchdescription+xml

Internet media type A media type (also known as a MIME type) is a two-part identifier for file formats and format contents transmitted on the Internet. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is the official authority for the standardization and publication o ...

Alternatives

Mozilla Firefox offers a bookmark keyword feature where an occurrence of in the bookmark URI gets replaced with the terms typed in the address bar following the initial keyword. * Sherlock (software)

References

External links

* , including specifications
Mycroft Project
– a collection of OpenSearch installers for Firefox {{web browsers Internet search engines Web syndication formats XML Open formats 2005 software

Support

Design

Alternatives

See also

References

External links