With other browsers becoming more and more popular, less well known browsers have had to learn to innovate and be original to compete with companies like Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. One of these competing browsers that's managed to stay in the market and keep a core fan base is a browser simply called “Opera.” Opera has a lot of interesting and easy to use features that have allowed it to compete with and be named as one of the world's most popular browsers. One of these features is a custom search engine. This allows you to search the web without using a hosted search engine like Yahoo or Google.

What this unique feature does is allows you to search directly from your address bar instead of having to search through an actual search engine. This eliminates the risk of your IP address being recorded by whichever search engine you happen to visit to help find your query whatever that query may be. This also keeps search engines from recording exactly what you search for and tailoring advertisements to you. Most online advertisements are based on information you've entered into a search engine and sometimes even locations you've entered into a search query. Custom searching through Opera will allow you to browse the net without having your search query recorded by anything other than your address bar, which can also dramatically cut down your risk of running into pop up ads that open up whether you want them to or not.

To open an Opera custom search engine first click on the Opera icon and open up your browser. Right click on the search field otherwise known as the “URL” field and you'll see an option that says “create search,” click on it. This will open up an individual window away from the one you already have. Enter in the name of a search engine and a key letter, for example for a Yahoo search engine you could type in “Y.” This creates a search engine that uses the same kind of algorithm as the search engine you typed into your URL field. Since Opera created this feature other browsers have adopted it such as Mozilla Firefox. Even though these custom search engines still use the same algorithms and software as major search engines, they greatly lessen your chance of attracting malware to your computer.

Google itself even has a custom search option that allows you to create a search engine on your own website using Google's own search engine software. You can customize these search engines to work with keywords and search for specific matches when typing your query into the search. An example of this kind of search engine is Gothle, a Google based search engine which focuses on gothic culture and keywords having to do with the query you enter into your search. This is only one example of the many custom search engines that are available for download and use all over the internet, Opera however was the innovator of this feature.