Top Universities Search

I have been fiddling with Rollyo for some time, telling myself how useful it would be if only I could build a decent list of websites I regularly dig into. Eventually, I have come up with a Top Universities Search list, which does not seem to be a very original idea among Rollyo users. The list restricts search to a selection of US and UK universities, including most of the Ivy League and Oxbridge.

One of Rollyo’s main strengths is, to my view, the non-evil URL scheme. Here is a foobar search on my Top Universities list:

http://rollyo.com/search.html?q=foobar&x=0&y=0&sid=10687

Getting rid of the x/y coordinates parameters does not alter results, so this URL is perfectly valid:

http://rollyo.com/search.html?q=foobar&sid=10687

People using Inquisitor (objectively the best search plugin you can get for Safari – more details) will find it nice and easy to implement this search list directly into their search shortcuts. The following search phrase works perfectly well:

http://rollyo.com/search.html?q=%@&sid=10687

Last piece of good news: the Alt-Command-R (as in Rollyo) shortcut does not interfere with any of Safari’s.