Keyword.URL

From MozillaZine Knowledge Base

The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. The correct title is keyword.URL.

This article describes the preference keyword.URL. To add, delete, or modify this preference, you will need to edit your configuration — do not edit this article.

Note: This preference was removed to consolidate search preferences in Firefox 23 (bug 738818). As of SeaMonkey 2.20 this preference, though not removed, apparently has no effect. [1]

1 Background
2 Possible values and their effects
3 Caveats
4 Replacing Google with other search engines for location bar search
5 First checked in
6 Has an effect in
7 Related bugs
8 Related preferences
9 See also
10 External links

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Background

When entering information in the Location Bar, Mozilla attempts to convert the information into a usable URL. For example, “mozilla.org” is automatically converted to “http://mozilla.org/”. When Mozilla is unable to discern what URL the user wanted, the information that was entered may be submitted to an Internet Keywords service. This preference determines the Internet Keywords service URL.

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Possible values and their effects

Any valid URL may be specified. The keyword will be appended to the URL and then the user will be redirected to the new URL. The default value is:

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=

In most Mozilla products; in Firefox and Sunbird the default was:

http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=

Recent versions allow this value to be localized.

In Firefox 2.0, the default has been changed to use Google’s “Browse by Name” service as part of Bug 323801:

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

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Caveats

This preference only has an effect when keyword.enabled is set to true.
When the Internet Keywords behavior is triggered, information will be sent to the specified URL without prompting. This has possible privacy implications, though no more serious than accidentally submitting a search to Google.
The default Internet Keywords provider in Firefox—Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” search—is the reason why typing a malformed URI such as ”http//www.mozilla.org“ (missing the colon after http) will automatically direct you to a site other than Mozilla’s.
Mozilla may also attempt a simpler lookup by concatenating a prefix and suffix on the supplied domain name. This action is controlled by the browser.fixup.alternate.* settings in about:config.

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Replacing Google with other search engines for location bar search

If you are not a fan of Google, you can replace it with another search engine, for example, Scroogle or Bing. Note that these give 'regular' result pages, whereas the default Google string directly sends you to the most likely result if it deems the query unambiguous.

Go to about:config, find the keyword.URL preference, context-click (right-click) the preference name, select Modify and enter a new value. It is much like using a keyworded bookmark for a search, except the query is appended at the end whereas keyworded bookmarks replace %s with your query.