If you have searched and found this post, then it may well be that you’re looking for the answer to this annoying problem. My favourite search engine is Google. That’s the one I want to use. But for some reason, some software programs have included yahoo search in their installation files. That’s all well and good but what if I don’t want to switch to yahoo?
I use Mozilla Firefox as my web browser of choice. I like how it works and to me is more robust than others I’ve tried. So imagine my annoyance when I go to do searches in the search toolbar (which is showing the Google symbol) only to be faced with a yahoo search page and results.
I have tried a few fixes out there without success. Each time I reboot my computer and start the browser fresh, yahoo is back… aaarghhh! I tried the temporary add-in Mozilla offers and it does fix it – but only while that session of the browser is open. Next time you open it searches take you back to yahoo.
If this has happened to you too, here’s a fix which does work.
- Type in your browser: open:config
- Search for “keyword.URL” (without the parenthesis)
- Right click on that line and enter “http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=” (without the parenthesis)
- Close the window, close the browser and re-open.
- Your search feature should now work correctly.
You will find that programs such as McAfee and others automatically have an alliance with Yahoo and will also install that search engine to be your default search tool. You can choose to untick it – if you notice it and remember to do so. But the above should work for you, as it has for me.
Oh, and you can change it to a different preferred search engine. You’ll just need to do a search to find out what their default search line is. Hope this helps!
