Every time you fire up Google Chrome, or any other browser for that matter, the primary search bar is sitting there waiting for you. Of course, the bar is called different names in different browsers, so we’ll stick with the most common one, the omnibar.

While it’s usually populated with a search term or the URL of the page you’re on, if you open a new tab, you’ll see that the bar reads ‘Search Google or Type a URL’.

In this article, we’re going over the omnibar and taking a look into what does ‘Search Google or Type a URL’ mean.

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Search query vs address

The phrase itself is pretty descriptive. The omnibar is an easy way for you to quickly search for anything in your default search engine (most likely Google if you’re using Chrome), and you can type a URL and hit enter to go to the page you want instead.

Typing a URL and directly visiting a website will save you both time and bandwidth. However, it has issues of its own. For starters, you’re going to have to type the URL exactly how it is, which is not an easy task considering the insane amount of websites these days. In addition, a small spelling mistake can either take you somewhere else or nowhere at all.

Searching for something in the omnibar is relatively easy; you just type in your search query and hit enter. This will trigger your browser’s default search engine with the query you entered, and you’ll see the results in an instant. From here on, you can browse as usual.

Which one do you pick primarily depends on the result you want. If you’re looking for something and not sure about the URL, search for it, and you’ll be good to go. On the other hand, if it’s a website you frequently visit, you’ll know the URL already, and hence, it’ll save you the extra trip to the search engine.

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