Is there a quick way of getting a beautiful URL to a Google search query?

Google Search uses a typical set of URL parameters at the search endpoint.

Quick solution

`http://www.google.com/search?

Example: `http://www.google.com/search?q=QUERY

Details:

If you are familiar with match types you can construct a more sophisticated URL and beef things up a bit

q= normal query

as_epq = advanced search exact phrase query, meaning that you need the words in order as they are shown like a phrase match

as_oq = advanced search open query (I think), meaning one or more of the words

as_eq = advanced search exclude query, cant have any of these words

...

There are more you can find here https://google.com/search?q=google+search+url+parameters

To build on Tom's answer, if you are wanting simplified search strings to use as Google Chrome search engine strings, here are two examples you can copy and use/tweak:

Normal Google search:

http://google.com/#q=%s

Site/domain-specific Google search:

http://google.com/#q=%s+site:example.com

Well, this must be done manually, but it is so simple that maybe that is OK?

Start by doing a new search, copy the URL and chop off everything from the '&' on. Now you've got something like the URL of old that you hark back to

https://google.com/search?q=Tokyo%20Disneyland%20Rides

Now replace the 'search?q=' with '#q='. In most contexts (though not stackoverflow answers) you can also get rid of the 'https://'.

The '%20' (encoding for a space character) can be replaced with '+' to make it shorter and easier to read.

You can even get rid of an 'o' or 'e' in google.com, but that doesn't seem worth the possible confusion IMO. (This only works if you don't specify HTTPS - do it with the https and let it redirect you to https.)

So, the shortest simple form of your original query - without using a URL shortner - is this:

google.com/#q=Tokyo+Disneyland+Rides

When you are on the results page, scroll down to the footer (hit the End key) and click Switch to basic version. You have to do that fast, or the script will add new images and move the footer away.

You get a simple version now with a rather clean link. You can switch back with the same procedure and you will still have the same short link.

With your example, this would be:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Tokyo+Disneyland+Rides&um=1&safe=active&hl=en&biw=1253&bih=789&tbm=isch

The URLs don’t stay that short when you search again from that page. To get short URLs back you have to switch again.

Probably not possible without using an external service or an extension. "Let me google that for you" is a service which allows you to make such pretty URLs. I'd post the link here, but posting links of that website is not allowed on StackExchange websites!

Edit: Was bored.. Here is some simple code which does it.. Feel free to implement it where you want to: http://jsbin.com/ihomir/4/