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How do I change my defult search engine to google?

  • 5 replies
  • 79 have this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by rjohnson19

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When i type something in the url box(normal url's work fine) it does an AOL search, how do i change it to a google search?

When i type something in the url box(normal url's work fine) it does an AOL search, how do i change it to a google search?

All Replies (5)

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You need to reset the keyword.url preference:

  1. Open Firefox.
  2. Type about:config into the address bar.
  3. You may see a warning message. Press the I'll be careful, I promise! button to continue.
  4. Type keyword.url into the Filter textbox.
  5. Right click the item that appears and select Reset.

It should now show a value with a Google URL.

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while that did change it from AOL search, it didn't make it a google search

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What search did that result in?

Could you please do the following:

  1. Type about:config into the address bar.
  2. You may see a warning message. Press the I'll be careful, I promise! button to continue.
  3. Type keyword.url into the Filter textbox.
  4. Right click the item that appears and select Copy Value
  5. Return to this topic and right click in the message textarea, and choose Paste.

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

You could try to use the Modify option in about:config and set it to the URL above.

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i did that, and its the same thing you posted, it comes up as: http://guide.opendns.com/?url=

and what i have in there just to be certain: and http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=

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Ah, OK.

That is a "feature" of OpenDNS. What is normally supposed to happen is that Firefox sees what you've typed is not a web site, and goes to the keyword search.

But because you've got OpenDNS as your DNS server, it is telling Firefox it has a website for your keyword searches, giving you that page. Its (one of the ways) how OpenDNS is funded.

To get your keyword searches back, you'll have to change DNS servers. Try resetting them to "automatically obtain" following instructions here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/change-tcp-ip-settings

I used to use OpenDNS and ran into the same issue, now I use Google Public DNS.