How to perform a search with a domain name or URL as the query, instead of visiting the domain or URL?
How can I perform a search where the query is a domain name or URL in Firefox for Android? For example, I would like to submit a search for "example.com" to DuckDuckGo. I do not wish to visit example.com, I want to use to search engine to find information about it. Similarly, sometimes I would like to search a full URL such as https://example.com/example.html
This used to be possible in older Firefox for Android, before the redesign, by tapping on the icon for the desired search engine after typing your query. It's possible in Firefox for desktop in several ways: by selecting a search engine icon after entering you query, by prefixing your query with "?", or by prefixing your query with @duckduckgo. None of these approaches seem to work on Firefox for Android.
Wšykne wótegrona (2)
Do either of these work for you? After tapping or pasting the domain or URL into the address bar:
Search suggestions enabled
Tap the search suggestion corresponding to the domain or URL.
Search suggestions disabled
Tap at the beginning of the domain or URL and type a ? before the other text to force a search.
Hi jscher2000, thanks for your quick response.
In my specific case I have search suggestions disabled, and I would like to keep it that way for privacy reasons. Although prefixing the string with a "?" does force a search, unfortunately the "?" remains in the query sent to the search engine (unlike the behavior on Firefox for desktop where the ? is removed). This therefore doesn't really solve the problem of wanting to search a string which is a URL or domain name.
For the case of search suggestions enabled (I have enabled them for the first time ever in order to test this), your solution works perfectly. This would solve the problem for me if I didn't want to keep search engine suggestions strictly disabled.