Search the web from the address bar

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  • Revision id: 43598
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  • Creator: scoobidiver
  • Comment: non-default search provider (common question), fixed link
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You can perform web searches right from the address bar. Just type in your search terms and hit Enter. Firefox will take you to the Google search results page. This article will show you how to customize this feature.

You can perform web searches right from the address bar. Just type in your search terms and hit Enter. Firefox will take you to your default search engine results page. This article will show you how to customize this feature.

Web search in the address bar

When you type in the location bar and press EnterReturn, Firefox takes you to the Google search results page (i.e. http://www.google.com/search?q=) for that search by default.

When you type keywords in the location bar (for example, Firefox or cats) and press EnterReturn, Firefox takes you to a secure Google search results page (i.e. https://www.google.com/search?q=) for that search by default.

When you type in the location bar and press EnterReturn, Firefox takes you to search results using the search provider selected in the search bar.

Turning off the web search in the address bar

You can turn off the web search in the address bar by changing a preference.

Note: This preference does not affect smart keyword searches from the Location Bar.
  1. Type about:config in the address bar and press EnterReturn.
    A warning page may appear. Click Accept the Risk and Continue to go to the about:config page.
  2. In the FilterSearch field, type keyword.enabled.
  3. Double-click the keyword.enabled preference to set its value to false.

Changing the search engine for the address bar

You can specify any valid URL to perform searches in the address bar by modifying the keyword.URL preference in the about:config page:

Note: The default Google search is encrypted to prevent eavesdropping. Switching to another search provider removes this protection.

Using another search provider

If you don't want to use the search provider selected in the search bar, add the smart keyword of the search provider you want to use before your search terms. To learn more about smart keywords, see How to search IMDB, Wikipedia and more from the address bar.

URL autocomplete

In addition to being able to do a web search, before you press EnterReturn Firefox will match URLs that you type to the URLs of websites that you've been to before. For example, if you type "moz" Firefox may autocomplete "mozilla.org" if you've been there before. Pressing EnterReturn in this case would take you directly to that address. For more info about the things that Firefox suggests as you type in the address bar, see Address bar autocomplete suggestions in Firefox.

Domain Guessing

If you enter an incomplete URL, Firefox can try to "fix up" the URL by adding a prefix, suffix, or both to what you type. For example, if you type www.microsoft in the Location Bar, Firefox will append .com to complete the URL. If you type mozilla.org, Firefox will prepend www. to complete the URL. This "guessing" is secondary to the web search in the address bar described above - it does not work unless the web search in the address bar is turned off.

Turning off Domain Guessing

You can turn off Domain Guessing by changing a preference.

  1. Type about:config in the address bar and press EnterReturn.
    A warning page may appear. Click Accept the Risk and Continue to go to the about:config page.
  2. In the FilterSearch field, type fixup.
  3. Double-click the browser.fixup.alternate.enabled preference to set its value to false.

Changing the prefix or suffix

You can specify a prefix (such as www) or suffix (such as .net) for the Domain Guessing feature.

In the about:config page, double-click the browser.fixup.alternate.prefix or browser.fixup.alternate.suffix preference. Enter the prefix or suffix you want Firefox to add to incomplete URLs.



Based on information from Location Bar search (mozillaZine KB), Domain Guessing (Mozilla.org End user documentation), and Internet Keywords (Mozilla.org End user documentation) For details and latest usage check these references.