Every modern web browser comes with a default search engine. Users can either use the default one or can configure a different search engine for their use. These default search engines are used whenever a user types a search query in the browser's address bar. Managing these search engines is something an average user is never bothered about. Either they go with the default one or prefer to manually open their preferred search engine's website. In this tutorial, we'll learn to change the default search engine for our web browser and how to add more search engines to the list of available options. Let's do it!
I generally prefer a privacy-oriented search engine as the default one to keep my search activity anonymous and private. You're free to choose the one you think is the best for your search sessions.
Make sure you're using the latest versions of these browsers to ensure the settings interface includes all the options mentioned in this guide. Older versions may not support all of the features and options.
Managing Search Engines in Firefox
At the time of this writing, the default search engine in Firefox is Google which is fine for most of its users. But, if you want to use some other search engine as the default one, here's how to do it.
Go to Settings → Search → Default Search Engine option and select the search engine you want to use as the default one from the drop-down menu.
It is possible that you may not find any other search engine in the drop-down menu except Google. Let's learn both removing and adding search engines to this menu.
For demo purposes, let's first remove the Startpage search engine from the list.
To do so, go to the Settings → Search → Search Shortcuts option. Now, select the search engine you delete and click the Remove button.
If you open the default search engine selection drop-down menu, the deleted search engine won't appear anymore.
Now, let's add this search engine back to Firefox so that it is again available in the drop-down menu.
The addition process is dead simple. Open the search engine's homepage. Right-click on the address bar, and click the (Add "... Search") option from the context menu as shown in the image above.
Now, if you open the default search engine selection drop-down menu, the added search engine will appear in the list. Simply click it to make it the default one.
Managing Search Engines in Chrome
The default search engine for Google Chrome is—Google. But, you can change that too. Like the previous section, we'll learn how to manage, add, and delete search engines in the Chrome browser.
Go to the Settings → Search Engine option and select the search engine from the drop-down menu you want to make the default one for the browser's address bar.
If the search engine is not present in the drop-down list, you can add it. Here's how to do it.
Go to Settings → Search Engine → Manage search engines and site search → Site Search option and click the Add button.
Add the search engine's Human-readable name, site's domain name, and its search URL. You can see that I've replaced the actual search query (see image above) with the %s parameter.
Finish the adding process by clicking the Add button.
To make the newly added search engine—the default one—simply open the drop-down menu by clicking the three dots and selecting the Make default option.
To delete the search engine, select the Delete option instead of choosing the Make Default option.
Managing Search Engines in Edge
And last but not least is Microsoft's Edge web browser. Let's see how to manage, add, and delete a custom search engine in this browser. It's almost the same as Google Chrome.
To get started, go to the Settings → Privacy, search, and services → Address bar and search option.
Here, you can open the drop-down menu to select the search engine you want to use in the address bar. If the search engine you want to use is not in the drop-down menu, you can add it too.
To do that, select the Manage search engines option and click the Add button.
Provide the search engine name, its domain name, and the search query URL in the box provided. Make sure to replace the actual query text with the %s parameter. Failing to do so will leave this entry in an inactive state.
To remove a previously added custom search engine, select the Remove option from the drop-down menu. Click the Make default option if you want to make your custom search engine—the default one—in the address bar.