Location Bar search

When you type a keyword into the Location Bar, Firefox does text string searching within your history and bookmarks. Results are displayed in a drop down list. The drop-down list results show you the page’s favicon, the full title, the URL, and whether you have bookmarked or tagged the page in a richly formatted two-line display.

You can restrict what kind of results are shown in the drop down list by using customizable characters. Include the character anywhere in the address bar separated by spaces to have it restrict what results are displayed. The characters are as follows:

Preference names in about:config	default key	action
browser.urlbar.match.title	#	Returns results that match the text in the title.
browser.urlbar.match.url	@	Returns results that match the text in the URL.
browser.urlbar.restrict.bookmark	*	Returns only results that are from the bookmarks.
browser.urlbar.restrict.history	^	Returns only results that are from the browser’s history.
browser.urlbar.restrict.tag	+	Returns only results that have been tagged.
browser.urlbar.restrict.typed	~	Returns only results that have been typed.
browser.urlbar.restrict.openpage	%	Returns only open tabs (visible tabs, not active tab), available in 3.7

If you do not select a result from the drop-down list but just press enter, Firefox takes you to the top Google result for that search by default.

However, by modifying the preference called keyword.URL, you can change this behavior. Here are a few example values:

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

Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" (default pre-Firefox 2.0)

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

Google "Browse by Name" (Automatically takes you to sites with a clear match, else performs a Google search) (default in Firefox 2)

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

Google Search (Google search results page)

If the keyword.URL search is disabled, Firefox may still attempt a simpler lookup, by concatenating a prefix and suffix on the supplied domain name. This action may be enabled or disabled using the browser.fixup.alternate.enabled setting in about:config. The prefix and suffix used can be set using browser.fixup.alternate.prefix and ...suffix.

For more advanced search capabilities, you may want to look into using keyword searches and the Search Bar.

Additional tips

If an unwanted web page keeps coming up as suggestion for auto-complete, you can use "Del" key (possibly "Shift+Del" on a Mac) just like removing suggestions in other drop-downs such as in requests for user id and password that you might already be familiar with.

A tip to elevate the ranking of a wanted webpage, if there is not much previous history, would be to Copy ("Ctrl+C") the url name from the location bar, and to Paste ("Ctrl+V") it back to the location bar and hit Enter, do this three times and it should turn up more often the next few times and normal usage will maintain higher visited usage statistics.

You can also perform history only searches in the History Sidebar ("Ctrl+H" {"Ctrl+Shift+H" on Mac}), or Bookmark only searches in the Bookmarks sidebar ("Ctrl+B") using the search boxes. One can also use the Library List ("Ctrl+Shift+H", and "Ctrl+Shift+B") with greater flexibility and more columns.

See also

• keyword.URL
• browser.urlbar.default.behavior
• Deleting autocomplete entries
• Viewing the browsing history - Firefox

External links

• Google’s “Browse By Name” in Firefox
• Internet Keywords at mozilla.org
• Location bar search at support.mozilla.com
• oldbar extension, reverts to single line search results (like Firefox 2)
• Locationbar Limit - Change number of visible results shown in locationbar dropdown when searching (with/without oldbar)