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entering an keyword in the adressbar leads to google and not to the website as in the older version; how can I change this?

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  • Last reply by TonyE

Christian
Christian
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When entering any keyword in the adress bar, it always leads to the google search engine instead of the desired website. The old FF version always led directly to the website. How can I change this? Many thanks!

When entering any keyword in the adress bar, it always leads to the google search engine instead of the desired website. The old FF version always led directly to the website. How can I change this? Many thanks!

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TonyE
TonyE
  • Moderator
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The change between Firefox 3.6.* and Firefox 4 is how location bar search works. In Firefox 3.6 it uses Google "Browse by name" search. With the browse by name search, it performs a Google search and if there is a clear match it will take you to the site, otherwise it shows the Google search result. With Firefox 4 it just performs a Google search if you type something which is not recognised as a URL.

To get the Firefox 3.6 behaviour on Firefox 4 you need to change a hidden preference.

  1. Type about:config into the location bar and press enter
  2. Accept the warning message that appears, you will be taken to a list of preferences
  3. Locate the preference keyword.URL, double-click on it and change its value to the link shown below

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=

If you prefer, you can also do this by installing the Browse by Name extension - https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/browse-by-name