Browser Search Engines

Browser Search Engines

From time to time your browsers search engine could be changed or hijacked to start using some other search service, some of them are spammy and not legitimate. Usually this will cause confusion and frustration as some search engines display less accurate results than others.

Chrome, FireFox and Internet Explorer have gotten better over the years, and one of the features they all share amongst each other is the ability to quickly search within the address bar. You know, the bar where you enter the website you want to go to.

 

It’s quite easy to change the address bar to use your preferred search engine. However each browser has a different process to change its search engine and today we will tell you how to do it!

Starting with Internet Explorer, the browser that comes default with each iteration of Windows.

1. Open IE
2. Go to the upper right corner and click the little wheel
3. Click on “manage add-ons“
   

   IE Settings

4. On the left side click the “search providers” button
   

   IE Addons

5. If you see the search provider you’d want to use from the list in the window, select it and click on “set as default”

 

Sometimes Internet Explorer has no other options besides Bing, then you’d have to add the search provider of choice into IE.

1.  If you don’t see your preferred provider, at the bottom of the window is a link, “find more search providers…”, click that and it will open a webpage.
2. On the webpage you can find your preferred provider.
3. Click on one of them and finally click the “add to internet explorer” button.
4. Once you’re all done, close the Internet Explorer add-ons window.

 

Google Chrome is the second browser we will show, this too keeps things simple.

1. Open Google Chrome
2. Up at the top in the right hand corner is a button which looks like three horizontal lines, click that and click settings.

1. Once you’ve clicked settings, look down on the page until you see “search”

1. Now just choose your favorite search engine.
2. Once chosen, feel free to close the window or go to any other page.

 

Managing the search settings in FireFox is much easier than any browser!

1. Open FireFox
2. Up at the top you will see two different bars, the one on the most left side is the address bar. The other bar, on the most right side is the search bar.
3. As seen in the image below, click the little icon located within in the right side bar, and just point and click to choose your preferred search provider.

Using the address bar for searching has become quite handy in the last few years, and its great time saver as you don’t have to manually go to google.ca or bing.ca.

If your computer doesn’t keep the changes, even though you’ve made the changes countless times, your browser may have some malicious malware and it may need another look. Give Group 4 Networks a call! 416-623-9677!