Looking at my site statistics I notice that a lot of visitors use Firefox as their browser, so I do I. There has always been one thing which niggled me about Firefox – the search box (top right on the screen) always uses google.COM for searches not google.CO.UK which I’d much prefer. There are others I’m sure who’d like to use google.FR or google.DE etc. Firefox doesn’t offer the option to change this anywhere and the subject goes unmentioned on the Firefox website.

Finally a couple of weeks ago I cracked how to change the search to use which ever google site you prefer. First close Firefox if it’s open. Using a text editor such as NotePad (not a word processor) you need to locate the file \Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins\google.xml open the file and change every mention of google.com to google.co.uk, google.fr etc. whatever you want. Then save the file keeping the same name, the old file will be over written. Open Firefox, do a search and the results will be returned by the google site of your choice.

One warning! Every time Firefox updates to a newer version the google.xml file gets reset. I found this out today when my Firefox install upgraded. You just have to modify the file again, only takes a few minutes, and is what reminded me of this and made me think to write about it. I hope it’s useful to someone.