The searcher package (CRAN, GitHub) provides a search interface to look up terms on popular websites such as ‘Google’, ‘Bing’, ‘DuckDuckGo’, ‘ixquick’, ‘StackOverflow’, ‘GitHub’, and ‘BitBucket’. Upon calling a search_*() function, a browser window will open with the search results for the query.

This release brings API parity by ensuring all search functions have the rlang flag turned on by default to guarantee R-specific results. Previously, the main search engine functions lacked the rlang flag and could potential retrieve odd search results. Based on searched trends for rlang, rstats, r programming, and r language acquired from Google Trends, the main search engine functions affix r programming when rlang = TRUE.

To improve your search query further, it has been suggested to use:

• "r how to do <x>"
  • "r how to remove legends in ggplot"
  • This is a baseline search query.
• "<package name> <problem>"
  • "ggplot2 fix x-axis labels."
  • If the package is R-specific, it may help dropping r and instead focusing on the package name at the start of the query.
• "r <package-name> <problem> <year> site:<specific-site>
  • "r ggplot2 center graph title 2018 site:stackoverflow.com
  • By specifying the package name, a year, and target site the “freshest” solution will likely be found.

These suggestions come from Steph Locke and Robert Mitchell

searcher news file entry for version 0.0.3 (2018-07-04)

searcher 0.0.3 - “Finding R”

Features

• Added a new search portal
  • search_ixquick(): Searches with ixquick. (#8, #6)

Changes

• Append r programming to major search engines by default (#11, #10)
• Add ixquick as a valid engine to search_site(). (#8, #6)
• Included link to repository and bug tracker to DESCRIPTION.

GitHub Changelog