The advantages I see of using DDG's bang are: 1. You don't personally have to maintain the list of keyword searches, so if Amazon changes how their search bar

The advantages I see of using DDG's bang are: 1. You don't personally have to maintain the list of keyword searches, so if Amazon changes how their search bar works, DDG takes care of changing the query string for you. 2. DDG auto-suggests keywords when you type the bang, so you don't necessarily have to remember some keyword you haven't used in months. The main disadvantage is that more of your searches go through a third party if you use the bang, rather than going directly to the site you are trying to search. All that said, I prefer the browser, too, because I can customize it to my needs (filling in defaults to other variables) and name the keywords things that I'll be more likely to remember or find easier to type. For keyword searches I haven't set up that DDG possesses, I can always use "ddg !keyword term" to get the same functionality or "ddg +site:subdom.dom.com term" for similar, but different functionality.