Using the Firefox URL Bar to search the search engine of your choice

I was asked in the comments of a recent post how to change the search engine that is used when you type something into the URL Bar (or Smart Bar) in Firefox.

By default, if you type a non-URL in the URL Bar in Firefox, Firefox will automatically send those keywords to the default search engine and return the results in the browser.

The default search engine is Google. If for some reason you managed to change it or it is not trying to search anywhere at all, here are the steps to get it working the way you want again:

Make sure you have search turned on for the URL Bar

Type “about:config” in the URL bar and “keyword.” in the filter field and you should get something that looks like this (click for full size image):

Make sure that the keyword.enabled is set to “true”. If it is not, double click the keyword.enabled line to toggle it to “true.”

Now when you type keywords in the URL Bar, Firefox will send them to your search engine. Now we need to set the default search engine for the URL Bar.

Setting the default search engine for the URL Bar

If you look at the image above again, you will notice another line with keyword.URL. This is the parameter Firefox is using to pick and communicate with the search engine. You have to not only point it to the search engine but build enough of the string so that Firefox will send your keywords to that search engine. Here are some possible settings for communicating with some of the common search engines:

• Google: http://www.google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q=
• Yahoo!: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=
• Micosoft: http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=
• Ask.com: http://www.ask.com/web?q=
• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
• Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/s/

Double click on the “keyword.enabled” line and copy the URL for the search engine or site you want into the pop up box. You will not need to hit save or restart the browser. All settings in the about:config take place pretty much immediately.

If you have any other search engines or sites with search options that you would be interested in setting as your default for the URL Bar, let me know which site and I’ll try to find the write string to use. If you figured out your own, let me know and I’ll add it.