Two of my favorite free Bible study tools are Google Chrome browser and BibleGateway.com.
Chrome has been my browser of preference for many years, as of this post.
BibleGateway.com has been my primary Bible study tool for even longer.
If you’re like me, you are always seeking easy ways to improve your overall productivity.
Did you know that you can easily add BibleGateway text and keyword searches in Google Chrome to simplify and speed your Bible study?
Here’s how.
Adding BibleGateway Text and Keyword Searches to Chrome
1. Open Google Chrome and access Chrome’s settings using the menu icon in the top right-hand corner.
2. Within the Settings page, locate the Search section and click “Manage search engines…”
3. When the Search engines window opens, scroll to the bottom.
4. Add the following two entries and click Done.
| Add a new search engine | Keyword | URL with %s in place of query |
| BibleGateway Keyword | bgk | https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?search=%s&version=NIV&searchtype=all&resultspp=500 |
| BibleGateway Text | bgt | https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=%s&version=NIV |
TIP: Copy the URL link above before you begin adding the entry in Chrome. If you leave the Chrome window to copy the URL after typing the first two columns, Chrome assumes you were finished and you’ll have to rekey the first two fields.
You can customize these searches to suit your prefer, such as changing the translation value (e.g., replace “NIV” with “NKJV” to search the New King James Version instead of the New International Version). You could also add more searches for specific subsets of the Bible, such as the Books of Moses or the Gospels.
To see the specifics of your desired customizations, simply manually execute your desired search on BibleGateway.com and then replace the search parameter with “%s” in Chrome’s “URL with %s in place of query” field.
For example, if I wanted to add a keyword search for just the Gospels, I would:
- Go to BibleGateway.com and select Study → Keyword Search from the menu.
- Select my desired options on the page (e.g., NIV translation; sample keyword search [I used “Jesus” for my test]; and “Limit search to” drop-down to “Gospels”).
- Click Search.
- Copy the URL of the page once it loads (for my example, “https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?search=jesus&version=NIV&searchtype=all&bookset=4&resultspp=500”).
- Create a new Search engines entry per the steps above, replacing:
- “https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?search=jesus&version=NIV&searchtype=all&bookset=4&resultspp=500″ with
- “https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?search=%s&version=NIV&searchtype=all&bookset=4&resultspp=500″
- For this example, I would probably use “BibleGateway Gospels” as my “Add a new search engine value” (in reference to the Search engines image above) and “bgg” (short for BibleGateway Gospels”) as my “Keyword” value.
That’s it! Now, let’s see what this looks like.
Download this guide PLUS
10 bonus BibleGateway searches.
Apologies: I haven’t gotten my automatic downloads working again since migrating chasingalion.com to newer tech. Email me at webmaster [at] chasingalion [.] com and I’ll send you the guide ASAP.
Executing a BibleGateway Text Search within Chrome
So I’m working in Chrome and I need to execute a quick search for a specific Bible passage.
I open a new Chrome tab (CTRL+T or CMD+T for you keyboard shortcut fans).
I type “bgt” in the address bar.
I press Tab and the address bar changes to my newly-entered BibleGateway Text search.
I type my passage I want to open and press Enter. For this example, I used “1 John 2:3.” You could just as easily search an entire chapter (e.g., “1 John 2”) or multiple chapters (e.g., “1 John 1-5”) if desired.
Viola! It searches BibleGateway and loads the passage.
Pretty sweet, huh?
We can do the same thing for keyword searches.
Executing a BibleGateway Keyword Search within Chrome
It’s essentially the same as the textual search above, except we use “bgk” rather than “bgt” to tell Chrome where we’re searching.
Open a new Chrome tab.
Enter “bgk” in the address bar and press Tab.
Type your desired keyword or phrase to search for and press Enter. I used “idols” for this example.
The search results page loads on BibleGateway.
Download this guide PLUS
10 bonus BibleGateway searches.
Apologies: I haven’t gotten my automatic downloads working again since migrating chasingalion.com to newer tech. Email me at webmaster [at] chasingalion [.] com and I’ll send you the guide ASAP.
Bonus Tip: Multi-Translation Search
The best Bible translation is multiple translations. None are perfect.
Here’s how to add a multi-translation textual search within Chrome.
I use 5 translations regularly for my studies.
- New International Version (NIV)
- New King James Version (NKJV)
- New American Standard Bible (NASB)
- Amplified Bible (AMP)
- Young’s Literal Translation (YLT)
Following the steps of the “Adding BibleGateway Text & Keyword Search to Chrome” section above, add the following entry in Chrome’s “Search engines” window.
| Add a new search engine | Keyword | URL with %s in place of query |
| BibleGateway Multi Text | bgmt | https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=%s&version=NIV;NKJV;NASB;AMP;YLT |
To use this multi-translation search, I:
- Open a new Chrome tab.
- Type “bgmt” and press Tab.
- I type the passage I wish to search for and press Enter.
If I use “1 John 2:3” again, here is what it looks like.
Download this guide PLUS
10 bonus BibleGateway searches.
Apologies: I haven’t gotten my automatic downloads working again since migrating chasingalion.com to newer tech. Email me at webmaster [at] chasingalion [.] com and I’ll send you the guide ASAP.
Happy searching!
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