Right-click in NYTimes website, "Search Google", doesn't lead to google.com
On most pages, I can highlight text xxx, right-click, and select "Search Google for xxx", and I will get a Google search on the term xxx. From the nytimes.com site, however, I often get taken not to google.com but to google.com/firefox, with an empty search box. This happens maybe 90% of the time, almost always when I've left the NYT home page and I'm reading an individual story. I have no idea why (no idea why google.com/firefox even exists, actually), but it's aggravating that this simple and very useful feature is not working reliably. If I select search engine YYY in the toolbar, "Search YYY for xxx" works just fine. It's only Firefox that does this, only on the NYTimes site, and only with Google as the search engine.
URL of affected sites
Chosen solution
I had the same problem. After looking through the NYT HTML I figured out you can disable their lookup functionality, which fixes this problem, with Adblock Plus. Just block the following script:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/js/common/screen/altClickToSearch.js
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Follow-up to the above: When right-clicking on a word on the NYTimes site, the "Copy" command does not work. This is true ONLY on the NYTimes site. Other commands in the right-click menu function normally. This inability to copy text is almost certainly linked to the inability to search the text.
I second this issue
I am having exactly the same problem on firefox 3.6 ( OS ubuntu 10.04). This does not happen in a different browser (chromium).
It seems to be the NY Times' "look up" of word definitions that's getting in the way. Select enough words to get the "look up" function to back off, and there's no problem. If the little question mark pops up, Firefox is unable to copy (and search for) the highlighted text.
There are problems under WinXP as well, but it seems to be a more complicated situation. -jpdemers
Chosen Solution
I had the same problem. After looking through the NYT HTML I figured out you can disable their lookup functionality, which fixes this problem, with Adblock Plus. Just block the following script:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/js/common/screen/altClickToSearch.js