"site search" doesn't seem to work

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Description of the issue: Site search does not work
How can this issue be reproduced?

  1. go to brave://settings > Search engine > Manage search engines and site search
  2. Scroll down to Site search, click Add, put in name: YouTube / shortcut: @youtube / url: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%
  3. Type @youtube into the browser bar and hit space or tab
  4. Observe that site search does not begin

Expected result:

Site search begins, as it would if you typed @bookmarks into the browser bar and hit space or tab

Brave Version( check About Brave):

Brave is up to date

Version 1.75.181 Chromium: 133.0.6943.141 (Official Build) (arm64)

2

Sometimes adding these sites manually can be tricky. I also think the documentation needs to be updated for this. On my end, for Youtube, the search string is:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s&page={startPage?}&utm_source=opensearch

I would recommend using the OpenSearch indexing to add custom search engines to the browser. Just go to brave://settings/search and ensure that the Index other Search engines option is enabled.

Then, visit any site with a search engine (such as Youtube.com) and perform a search. You’ll then see that site appear in the Inactive shortcuts section of brave://settings/searchEngines. Click the Activate button and you should be good to go.

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