[ ] DuckDuckGo bangs

The search engine DuckDuckGo has a thing called bangs, where you can type an exclamation mark followed by a short code of numbers/letters, and then the search typed beside it goes directly to the website for that code. Some music websites are integrated, eg.:

!rym for RateYourMusic: [duckduckgo.com] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!rym%20bandtoband
!discogs for Discogs: [duckduckgo.com] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!discogs%20bandtoband
!mb for MusicBrainz: [duckduckgo.com] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!mb%20anthrax
!mab for Encyclopaedia Metallum: [duckduckgo.com] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!mab%20anthrax

The code !b2b isn't taken yet so it'd be great to try and get it. Problem is the BandToBand search doesn't yet work with a query string. Would it be possible to get something like the following working, even if just for the specific purpose?

[bandtoband.com] https://bandtoband.com/search?q=the%20bandtoband%20band

Speaking of search, it would be great to have the Firefox search-engine extension working again. (I can't find the old forum posts about that.)

I realised you did the redirect thing where a band page that doesn't exist any more redirects to a search, eg. [bandtoband.com] https://bandtoband.com/band/Blackjack redirects to [bandtoband.com] https://bandtoband.com/search/band?q=Blackjack

So I've just requested a DuckDuckGo bang now using the pattern [bandtoband.com] https://bandtoband.com/search/band?q={{{s}}}

No major issue if you do end up changing the URLs as there's a way to request updates to existing bangs. I do wonder if you may prefer to use the old/localized search only for these URLs. Otherwise a link pasted online could see web crawlers following the link and burning up the quota faster, eg. if someone links to a band page somewhere and then the band is disambiguated later.

That's totally fine to have set up that search. It would take a great deal of tweaking to force the local run search based on that parameter (although not impossible). What I need to do is get off of Algolia and get an advanced local search engine running. I'll have to think about the best way forward from here.


Kevin