Here is a tip for faster searching of some Korean websites. These are bookmarklets I made to help me search Naver, Naver Dictionary, and Coupang much faster on my phone. You can add these to your own mobile device or even your desktop browser to perform faster searches for terms or products on these services.
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| Naver quick search bookmarklet on iOS |
Drag these links to your bookmark bar (on desktop) or long-press and add them as bookmarks (on mobile). If they don't work, you can use the included URLs to manually add them.
Naver search bookmarklet
javascript:var%20s=prompt('Naver%20search');if(s==null)%7B%7Delse%20if(s=='')%7Balert('Please%20enter%20search%20terms')%7Delse%7Blocation.href='https://m.search.naver.com/search.naver?query='+encodeURIComponent(s);%7D
Coupang search bookmarklet
javascript:var%20s=prompt('Coupang%20search');if(s==null)%7B%7Delse%20if(s=='')%7Balert('Please%20enter%20search%20terms')%7Delse%7Blocation.href='https://m.coupang.com/nm/search?q='+encodeURIComponent(s);%7D
Naver Dictionary search bookmarklet
javascript:var%20s=prompt('Naver%20dictionary%20search');if(s==null)%7B%7Delse%20if(s=='')%7Balert('Please%20enter%20search%20terms')%7Delse%7Blocation.href='https://en.dict.naver.com/#/search?query='+encodeURIComponent(s);%7D
How to add them
Since I assume you're on mobile, you can't just drag a link to your bookmarks bar, and bookmarking a javascript link is sometimes forbidden (seems so on iOS). In that case you'll need to do it manually:
- Make a "dummy" bookmark first (just bookmark anything)
- Copy the codes above
- Edit the dummy bookmark
- Paste the codes into the URL field
The same can be done for desktop too.
Screenshots in action
Here's what it looks like. This example is using iOS Safari. Again, IMHO this is the best/fastest/easiest way to search Naver on iOS.
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| Tap the bookmarklet on a new-tab page (L), a Naver search box appears immediately (R). Enter terms and be taken immediately to the results page. |
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| Same bookmarklet, on desktop Chrome |
Why use bookmarklets?
Because they are faster.
One of the inconveniences of using iOS is that you can't customize the default search engine, at least not the one used by Safari. So searching on Naver for example meant that I had to open the Naver app or Naver mobile website. The Naver homepage is not exactly a lightweight minimalist design. I don't have time to wait a second or two while the "green dot" and the latest Now streaming content loads. I just want to search my terms ASAP and get to the results. I also prefer to use the Coupang mobile site to quickly add items to my cart, then browse more at home on PC before I pull the trigger and buy, so this saves me having to hit "괜찮습니다, 모바일웹으로 볼게요." [I generally prefer to use mobile sites over apps anyway. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Better for tracking/ad protection and generally faster]
Bookmarklets let me do that. I add them to my Safari favorites and when I tap them a no frills search box immediately pops up. I type my terms and it immediately takes me to the results. It sounds silly, but it saves me a lot of time and frustration during the day.
On Android you have more flexibility, and even on iOS you can use the Naver App search widget. But I personally prefer this workflow.
Final thoughts
All I've done is change the URL for the various website's search parameters. Feel free to modify them to search any site you want.
- https://m.search.naver.com/search.naver?query=
- https://m.coupang.com/nm/search?q=
- https://en.dict.naver.com/#/search?query=
You can also use this syntax to set up Siri shortcuts. You can ask your phone "Hey Siri, search Coupang for tomato sauce" and it can pull up the Coupang results. Obviously works better if you set your Siri language to recognize Korean so you don't have to limit yourself to Coupang's English term search results.
I find that it also will generally pull up results in-app if the app is installed, so you can also incorporate that functionality to let you search Naver, for example, using Siri (or Google) instead of the "Green Dot".
Hope they help.
Update 2024:
I've now started using a userscript redirect to get my Google searches to automatically redirect to Naver. See: Set Naver as default search engine in Safari
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