Change default Firefox Search engine to Bing, Wikipedia, Yahoo, etc.

Google is set as defult search engine and opens up when you hit enter after typing your query in address bar.

We usually search for any item in Firefox by two ways :
1) Search by typing the word in the Search Box.
2) Search by typing the word in the URL

Although the search box lets you allow searching , I find using the URL method more useful. But with advent of search engines like WoframAlpha , Bing , people do not want to remain with Google Search and want to explore some new engines. All said and done , how do they change their default search engine from Google to Bing or any other search engine. We at Blogsolute will teach you how to do this change by a simple trick .

Hands-On

Well , the trick is to simply change a key value in Mozilla Firefox’s key collection. Type about:config and Click on “Yes , I’ll be careful , I promise “ button. You will now see a lot of preference names and key values.

change firefox default search

In the Filter , type in keyword.url , the key which we will be working on. Now click on keyword.url key and double click it to modify it. You will see the default value in it as “http://www.google.com/search?q=t with advent of search engines like WoframAlpha , Bing , People gradually are switching to ” without the quotes. Now below we give you a compiled list of the search value for the keys for certain search engines.

1) Bing – http://www.bing.com/search?q=

2) WoframAlpha – http://www35.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=

3) Yahoo – http://in.search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=yfp-t-in&type=ds&p=

4) Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Once you have done this , Press Ok and Restart Firefox. Now you are ready to search. Hope you liked this trick. Although there are some more search engines , the list we provided are the ones mostly used for finding information. If you have the value for some more Search engines or want for more search engines , do leave us a comment. We would be pleased to grow this list.

Click Here to Leave a Comment Below 7 comments
Justin - September 10, 2009

This is just what I was looking for! I switched to Bing from Google and this was the last thing I needed to change.

Reply
free cars manuals - November 3, 2009

Awsome article, it’s my pleasure to read your blog.

Reply
Graham - June 3, 2010

Have a look at https://www.startpage.com/au/protect-privacy.html for info on their search engine…not sure what their international search engine address would be though.

Reply
Me - December 2, 2010

I actually used this to reset to google. I just hate Bing!

Reply
Hey - March 31, 2011

The only thing is it seems to be some what slower than before? I too wanted to change from google to bing.

Reply
David - July 27, 2012

Thanks. I wasn’t trying to achieve the same exactly but Firefox was set to Yahoo for the search in the URL bar and I wasn’t able to correct it so I’ve found a solution sort of following this.

Reply
Ron Kocsis - January 22, 2013

I tried to get remove Bing using this technique and it doesn’t work on Win7 64 bit, Firefox 18.0.1. Even changed browser:search* and others and that crap still comes up when I hit add tab.

Reply

Leave a Reply: