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Changing the Search Engine in Firefox’s Awesome Bar

You are likely aware that searches can be executed directly from Firefox 3′s Awesome Bar - the address bar whose functionality was greatly enhanced in the latest release of the browser. You probably wouldn’t have a reason to be reading this post if you didn’t. To me, it is a curious feature because Firefox already has a Google Search box prominently displayed in it’s interface – and has for quite awhile. Redundancy aside, this feature likely helps with usability of the browser itself. How?

When a word or phrase is typed into the Awesome Bar, either a Google search is run or if the keyword has any sort of understood relevance Firefox will navigate directly to an authoritative site for that keyword. Let me explain, the keyword firefox will redirect to Mozilla’s Firefox website. Microsoft or intel keywords forward to their respective corporate websites. It’s a little more intelligent than just apply .com to the keyword – you can almost think of it like returning the first result in a Google Search or I’m feeling lucky. It can be a handy feature if you get into a habit of using it. But what if Google is not your preferred search engine? It’s possible to change this and it involves about:config and a bit of research.

  1. In a new Firefox window/tab, type about:config in the address bar.
  2. From the Filter box, type keyword.URL
  3. Double click on the result and change the value from http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q= to
    • http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=for Yahoo
    • http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q= for Live
  4. I’ve provided two examples for competing search engines but in actuality, just about any engine could be plugged in. This is where it takes a bit of research to come up with the correct search URL. Just run a search from your engine of choice and look at the returning URL. More or less, it should be clear on what to use for the keyword.URL value.
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Discussion

6 comments for “Changing the Search Engine in Firefox’s Awesome Bar”

  1. Thanks a bunch for this!
    Someone had changed mine to Bing.com…

    Posted by Robin | June 5, 2009, 3:22 am
  2. I’m stumped. Yahoo has hijacked my awesome bar, yet the about:config keyword is set to google and the default search engine is set to google. Now what?

    Posted by Christopher Parker | October 23, 2009, 4:35 pm
  3. Look in your Add/Remove programs and ensure you have uninstalled any of the Yahoo add-ons, like their Toolbar. Secondly, browse to your Firefox installation folder and look in the subfolder searchplugins, delete anything related to Yahoo and restart Firefox.

    Let me know how it goes!

    Posted by Adam Myers | October 26, 2009, 7:20 am
  4. Thanks. Someone back home idiotly did install yahoo toolbar or so and I was stuck with yahoo search.

    Heck I had fallen in love to ‘search on the URL bar’ and sometimes the website it suggest really is what I’ve been looking for. Y! Search sucks.

    Thanks again.

    Arif

    Posted by Arif | November 13, 2009, 5:00 pm
  5. I was having the same problem. Everything was set to be google search, yet it was still using yahoo. In my add-ons list, opened through firefox itself, I found “search settings plugin” disabling it allowed google to roam free again.

    Posted by T | November 29, 2009, 1:17 pm
  6. Thank you SO MUCH…you just saved me a ton of time and you appeared number 4 or 5 when I google searched

    Posted by Anon | January 5, 2010, 7:18 am

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