2024-06-04

Adding Google Web search to Firefox

Recently I read this blog post which highlights some bad practices by Google and also provides a way to make the new web search results tab the default search provider for Vivaldi browser.

In that post, the author lists some fixes for other browsers. In this post I'm gonna show another way to fix it for Firefox, a solution that doesn't rely on external websites or redirections for it to work.

On your Firefox, go to the Bookmarks → Manage Bookmarks menu (also accessible via CMD+SHIFT+O or CTRL+SHIFT+O).

Click the Bookmark Menu category on the left side panel and using the gear icon menu, Add a bookmark.

Fill up the details just like that original post, with the following URL:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14

Named it Google Web Search and add a keyword gw. It will look like this:

From now on, you can type gw <search terms> in Firefox address bar to search google and go to the web tab for results.

You can create your own personalised search keywords for other sites as well. Here is a screenshot showing some of mine:

For example, check out the selected bookmark that allows me to search Kobo store for books directly from my address bar by typing kobo <search terms>.

Another way to add such convenience search methods, is to right-click inside search field in a site you want to add a search bookmark for and select

And then fill in the keyword you want to use:

After adding that bookmark, I can search Unsplash by typing unsplash <search terms> on the address bar.

If you want to learn more about keyword searches, go to Firefox documentation.