One of the things I love about Mozilla Firefox is the ability to perform Google keyword searches from the address bar.    But the intensely annoying part is that Google performs by default a “Are You Feeling Lucky?” (AYFL) search which is bad if you prefer to see a full page of search results instead.    In a AYFL search, the page you’re looking for may not always be the one you need.

The good news is that the January 2008 edition of PC World magazine has outlined a way to change this in Firefox and I for one am applauding.   There aren’t many things that annoy me about Firefox but this was one of them.

Here’s how to disable the AYFL function and get Firefox to do a full Google search from the address bar :

• Open a new tab in Firefox and type about:config .    This opens up the Firefox settings.

• Type in keyword and double-click on keyword.URL

• In the box that pops up, remove the Google search string (you may want to copy it into a notepad file as a backup just in case you ever decide to return to AYFL searches in the future) and in its place enter the following search string :  http://www.google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q= 

• Save and close.    Close the about:config tab page.    You may also have to re-start Firefox.

When you now perform a Google search from the Firefox address bar, you will be given a full set of search results and NOT a AYFL search.