 Example of a web page which offers to add a new search plugin. With Firefox, the symbol of the currently selected search engine becomes bluish. The user can add the search engine offered by that page by clicking the triangle. | |
| Internet media type | application/opensearchdescription+xml |
|---|---|
| Developed by | Amazon.com |
| Initial release | March 15, 2005 (2005-03-15) |
| Latest release | |
| Type of format | Web syndication |
| Extended from | RSS |
| Open format? | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 |
| Website | github |
OpenSearch is a collection of technologies that allow the publishing of search results in a format suitable forsyndication andaggregation. Introduced in 2005, it is a way forwebsites andsearch engines to publish search results in a standard and accessible format.
OpenSearch was developed byAmazon.com subsidiaryA9 and the first version, OpenSearch 1.0, was unveiled byJeff Bezos at theO'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference on 15 March 2005.[2][3] Draft versions of OpenSearch 1.1 were released during September and December 2005. The OpenSearch specification is licensed by A9 under theCreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.[4]
Web browsers that support OpenSearch includeSafari,[5]Microsoft Edge,[6]Firefox[7] andGoogle Chrome.[8]
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[9] As of December 5, 2019, search engine add-ons for Firefox that are powered by OpenSearch have been removed from Mozilla Add-ons.
OpenSearch consists of:
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 andAtom are the only ones formally supported by OpenSearch aggregators, however other types, such asHTML are perfectly acceptable.
<atom:link rel="search" ... /> for Atom feeds[10] or<link rel="search" ... /> for RSS feeds[10] and HTML documents.[11]application/opensearchdescription+xmlInternet media type.[13]Mozilla Firefox offers a bookmark keyword feature[14] where an occurrence of%s in the bookmark URI gets replaced with the terms typed in the address bar following the initial keyword.
In OS X, website developers can aid Safari in discovering searchable content by including an OpenSearch description document on their site, [...]
However, you can change the default search engine in Microsoft Edge to any site that uses OpenSearch technology
Firefox supports search suggestions in OpenSearch plugins
By providing an OpenSearch description document (OSDD), you enable Google Chrome to include your site in the list of search engines in the browser.