By default, when one types a term into the address bar of Firefox (even if it not a URL), it automatically fetches the most likely website related to that term according to Google. It’s thesame result when one hits the “I’m feeling lucky” button on Google.com.

This is a nice feature but I recently found myself wanting to get the Google results page instead of being randomly thrown a website by the search engine. It’s also very convenient to be able to search directly from the address bar as it reduces the amount of typing done. I would no longer have to type “www.google.com” into the address bar, I’ll just type what I’m searching for and it gives me the Google search results.

To change the default search method, we have to take advantage of Firefox’s discrete internal settings. The following steps show how to configure the browser and change the search method:

1. Launch Firefox, and type about:config in the address bar to launch the hidden internal settings. Because these settings are sensitive, Firefox gives a warning from which to proceed you must click on the “I’ll be careful, I promise” button. Humorous little change from the boring old “OK”.

2. A long list of configuration keys are revealed. Type keyword.url in the Filter textbox to narrow down to the setting that we want to change.

3. Right click on the keyword.url entry and select Modify. By default, the value of this config setting provides Google with the parameters to perform a “I’m feeling lucky” search. What we have to do is to change the parameters to enable us see the results. Therefore, we should change the value to: http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=0&q=. Click Ok and your changes would be saved.

4.  Give it a go! Try typing any term in the address bad and hit return. You should see the Google results page for your search term.

And there you are! You probably no longer have to visit Google.com or Google.co.uk. Infact, you can extend it to other search engines as you wish. If you prefer to use Bing or Yahoo as your search provider, the following values should replace the Google parameters in step 3

Tags: browsers, firefox, google, internet, search, search engine, tutorial