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location bar search not working as expected

  • 1 reply
  • 12 have this problem
  • 5 views
  • Last reply by TonyE

agrv8tor
agrv8tor
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Location bar searches always take me to the google search results page since upgrading to Firefox 4.0. They used to take me to the best matching URL. For example, if I only typed "mozilla" in the location bar, it would direct me to www.mozilla.org, now it takes me to the google search results page as if I searched google for mozilla. This issue started when I upgraded to 4.0.

Location bar searches always take me to the google search results page since upgrading to Firefox 4.0. They used to take me to the best matching URL. For example, if I only typed "mozilla" in the location bar, it would direct me to www.mozilla.org, now it takes me to the google search results page as if I searched google for mozilla. This issue started when I upgraded to 4.0.

All Replies (1)

TonyE
TonyE
  • Moderator
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The change between Firefox 3.6.* and Firefox 4 is how location bar search works. In Firefox 3.6 it uses Google "Browse by name" search. With the browse by name search, it performs a Google search and if there is a clear match it will take you to the site, otherwise it shows the Google search result. With Firefox 4 it just performs a Google search if you type something which is not recognised as a URL.

To get the Firefox 3.6 behaviour on Firefox 4 you need to change a hidden preference.

  1. Type about:config into the location bar and press enter
  2. Accept the warning message that appears, you will be taken to a list of preferences
  3. Locate the preference keyword.URL, double-click on it and change its value to the link shown below

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=

If you prefer, you can also do this by installing the Browse by Name extension - https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/browse-by-name