Legal Marketing & PR

Remove Ask.com as Default Search in URL Field

Somehow ask.com toolbar was installed on my computer recently. It defaulted all automatic searches in the URL field to their engine. Not that there is anything completely wrong with ask.com, but I simply prefer Google’s results.

Actually, there is one really annoying thing about ask.com, its the fact that on most searches the first 10 listings are all paid and they waste a lot of real estate on the right side of those listings. You have to scroll down two or three times to get to the actual search results. It seems that they should double or triple column those paid results, to take advantage of the unused real estate. It would allow them to promote two or three top spots and move up the actual search results. Basically, make the page more usable.

Anyways, I wanted to go back to Google search results for any mistypes in the URL bar and other search features. However, removing the toolbar as a program, removing the program directory, and resetting all defaults in Firefox / Internet Explorer did not allow to to escape their results. Trust me I tried everything in each programs options, to no avail.

After some searching, if you are having the same issue, here is how to correct:

Internet Explorer 6 (presumably 7 too)

1. Go to Control Panel in Windows itself
2. Click on Internet Properties
3. Click on General
4. Click on Search settings
5. Set new default and delete ask.com

Firefox

1. Open a new tab or window.
2. Type “about:config” and hit enter, this brings up the all powerful settings of Firefox.
3. Agree to the warning that you could mess things up
4. Find keyword.url, you probably should not change anything else
5. Double click and change keyword.url string to something else like http://www.google.com/search?q=
6. Note that you cannot just put in the web site domain, you must put in the parameters before your search query. So find your favorite search engine, do a search and grab all the text up to your actual search results. So that a search for “test” in Google returns this, http://www.google.com/search?q=test, but all you need to input into the keyword.url field is http://www.google.com/search?q=

Finally, yes I know you can also manage default pages via the default settings under Tools > Options and also Manage Search Engines for the default search area, but those do not remove the default search if something is typed in wrong in the URL line. I mistype a lot or use the URL field to get the No. 1 listing automatically. I believe this is in the only way to stop ask.com and other search engines from becoming your default URL search choice.

Full post as published by PaperStreet Web Design: SpeakOut on November 22, 2008 (boomark / email).