Firefox search bar google bug fix

A month or so ago Firefox updated itself to version 2.0.0.6, as a result my firefox search bar options have been missing missing google.co.uk. I use the search bar within firefox and am returned with www.google.com results.

I trawled the Firefox website and Googled galore for an answer to this but found bob all, so this afternoon fed up of having to manually goto google.co.uk for my searches, I thought I would have a dig around.

I found the solution!

Ok, if anyone else has this problem (probably not seeing as there is nothing on the web about it at the moment!), just follow these steps to enlightenment;

1. Browse to C:\program files\mozilla firefox\searchplugins
2. Open “google.xml” in a text editor such as notepad or wordpad
3. Look for any references of http://www.google.com/
4. Change/edit the “www.google.com” to your locale which for me is “www.google.co.uk”
5. Save it and close
6. Restart Firefox and test the search bar

Your result should now be from google.co.uk. By the time you read this the bug may have been fixed in the next update but hey, I tried :o)

5 Responses to “Firefox search bar google bug fix”


  1. 1 kev

    Hey David,

    Just curious, what locale is your copy of Firefox?

  2. 2 David

    Hi Kev

    My copy of Firefox is en-gb, which is why I was suprised to see that google.com was the preference. Before the upgrade the google option was for .co.uk

  3. 3 Michael

    Hi David,

    Thanks for this. I have the exact same problem and it’s really irritating! You are not alone!

  4. 4 Wahoo

    Thank you for sharing!

  5. 5 Hammy

    Thanks for this. Emigrated to Finland and don’t want to be in a rush to learn Finnish just because of this ‘feature’! Works a treat.

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