One possibility is that someone might have created an alternate "search plugin" which adds the relevant stuff to the URL when submitting the search. You can shop an extensive list of search plugins here: http://mycroft.mozdev.org/.

It's possible to manually hack a search engine plugin if needed. When I researched this last year, the following, when added to the search request, would show only UK/GB results:

&meta=cr%3DcountryUK|countryGB

(Thread: The option to select "search UK sites only' has disappeared from my Google sidebar - Google Groups)

Another possibility is that you can create a Google "custom search". I can't find the steps at the moment. I might be best to post about that on Google's forums.

I hoping that there is a way to set this as permanent option

How do you usually search?

• Search bar (the one with the icon drop-down at the left)
• Address bar
• Built-in Firefox home page
• Directly on Google.co.uk

I have the search engines in the little box on the right of url field. with the dropdown that lists the search engines. Normally I type in there ... or press 'home' icon, and that is set to Google.co.uk then I enter search terms in the google page

Excellent. Search the following page for the phrase pages from the UK and install that plugin:

http://mycroftproject.com/google-search-plugins.html