hello, unfortunately this has been an intentional change by developers - the same search engine as in the search bar will be used when you type something in the address bar. this is getting introduced on firefox 23 and upwards & the keyword.url preference won't have any effect after this change...

Ouch that's one of the reason why i switch from Google Chrome to Firefox.

let's hope someone will develop an addon to restore the old functionality - i suppose it's a change that might upset quite a few people, so the chances are quite good...

• Bug 738818 - consolidate Firefox search preferences

Please DO NOT comment in bug reports: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html

Actually this is a change for the good, it makes it harder for firefox to get hijacked by malware/adware. There will likely be a addon that restores this functionality though.

Thta's a really fricking annoying change. I keep my search bar set to wikipedia. I used to be able to type either a url or a word into the location bar and either get the site or google search that would likely lead me to the site I wanted. Wikipedia was also at my finger tips. Now the search capability of the address bar is redundant to the search bar, and I will need to keep my search bar on google, and take several additional mouse actions to get a wikipedia search. This is not a UI improvement, it is the opposite.

Unitl I found this topic I struggled with "why the f--- do I keep getting redirected to wikipedia searchs from the address bar". I googled how this worked which lead me to try configuring several case-spellings of the keyword.url setting unsuccessfully. Surprising behavior changes without a warning are not a great idea.

Really? On purpose? Please change it back!!! Or somebody make a workaround plugin.

you can use the keyword search extension by mike kaply...

Thank you. I did find it after. Love it and told him so. Blessings.

It's already here, the expected extension !

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/keywordurl-hack/?src=api

Add the extension & add(right click, "New" then "String")/change the "keyword.URL" to "http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=" in "about:config"

Oh & check that "keyword.enabled" is set to "true" :)

thanks for informing me :)