Q. How do I add additional remote sources to Windows 7's search using search federation?

A. Windows 7 makes it easy to search locations on the Internet using Explorer through the new Search Federation feature. Many sites provide ODSX files that can be downloaded and executed to add a new option to the Users, Search area. After you double-click the OSDX file, you'll be prompted to install it, as shown here.

Just type in a search and the results are found from the selected site. Note that the results will vary based on the site being searched. Some sites return results, comments, and thumbnails while others will return only some of this data. Below is an example execution for YouTube.

Click to expand.

You can create your own ODSX files, as long as the site you want to search provides an RSS search feature. Below is an example format—replace the red locations with actual RSS search locations to make it work.

&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;<br>

OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" 
xmlns:ms-ose="http://schemas.microsoft.com/opensearchext/2009/"&gt;<br>

ShortName&gt;<h7 style="color:red"><strong>NT FAQ</strong></h7>&lt;/ShortName&gt;<br>
&lt;Description&gt;<h7 style="color:red"><strong>Search NTFAQ.COM via Windows 7 Search.</strong></h7>&lt;/Description&gt;<br>

Url type="application/rss+xml" template="<h7 style="color:red"><strong>http://www.ntfaq.com/search?q={searchTerms}&amp;amp;format=rss</strong></h7>"/&gt;<br>

Url type="text/html" template="<h7 style="color:red"><strong>http://www.ntfaq.com/search?q={searchTerms}</strong></h7>"/&gt;&lt;/OpenSearchDescription&gt;

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