How do I stop the search from address bar redirecting to websites other than Google results?
How do I stop the search from address bar redirecting to websites other than my default search provider Google?
When I try to search from the address bar, Firefox automatically opens up websites that it thinks must match the query, instead of simply taking me to Google search results like IE, Chrome and Safari do.
All Replies (2)
Do a malware check with a few malware scan programs.
You need to use all programs because each detects different malware.
Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of the database before doing a scan.
- http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php - Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
- http://www.superantispyware.com/ - SuperAntispyware
- http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html - Spybot Search & Destroy
- http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php - Ad-Aware Free
- http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx - Windows Defender: Home Page
See also "Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked and What to do when searches take you to the wrong search website
Thanks for the info Cor-el. Honestly my PC is totally clean. I have a feeling it is something along the lines of Internet Explorer search preference settings, except I cannot find the place to change them in Mozilla. With Internet Explorer, the default settings allow IE to go directly to the website that best matches the search phrase, (unless of course you change those settings to "Just take me to the search results page). That is how Firefox acts. I did some searching online for this issue and it appears that 1,000's of Firefox users have this same issue. From what I can tell, it is referred to as Firefox Default Search, but I'm not sure.