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Firefox location bar "i'm feeling lucky" search

Wouter Schut [PersonRank 10]

Friday, November 3, 2006
17 years ago24,625 views

If you fill in [gmail to docs] in google and click on i'm feeling lucky you get a different result then when you fill [gmail to docs] into the location bar of Firefox.

I always though Firefox just did a "i'm feeling lucky" search on google. But I think this recently changed. Now I get plain search results for searches with less certainty. Which is very cool and handy by the way.

For instance when I fill in [imdb borat] into the location bar (of Firefox 2) I am immediately redirected to the imdb page of the new Borat film.

How many of you just type stuff into the location bar?

I personally have a small shortcut ('g') which I type into the location bar to do a google search. But I think I won't have to do that anymore.

:D

Wouter Schut [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Queries which give search results:
gmail to docs
seweso
wouter schut

Queries which result in redirect to first result:
google blogoscoped
imdb borat
wikipedia borat
google finance
microsoft
apple ipod

Wouter Schut [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Hmm the location bar seems to be set to:

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

(this is the setting keyword.URL in about:config)

Wouter Schut [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

It's a Firefox 2 feature.

http://www.obsess.com/2006/09/29/feeling-lucky-in-firefox-2/

I might have missed the browse-by-name feature of google somehwhere...

Wouter Schut [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Some more links:

http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/answer.py?answer=9267

http://blogoscoped.com/search.php?q=Browse+by+name

Don't mind me... I'm just doing my own thing here. Always nice to answer your own questions :$

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Yeah, I also never understood why this thing is different (sometimes different?) from the Google #1 result. But recently I misspelled something while searching from the location bar and it brought up a Google search result with a "did you mean?" notice, which is very nice (and I guess new, too?).

Wouter Schut [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

The keyword.URL setting in Firefox 2 is set to:

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

it was set to a normal "I'm feeling lucky"-search.

This type of search has always been integrated in google toolbar and is called "Browse by name".

Sohil [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Philipp The "I'm Feeling Lucky" "bug" was "fixed" in Firefox 2. Now they use the Browse by name from Google Toolbar in IE.

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

Haochi [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

It's not only a Firefox 2(It was with 1.5 as well) feature, if you have Google as your default search engine in IE7, it will do the same thing. (At least to me)

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