Firefox's Awesome Bar not insta-searching anymore?

MetroidZoid

I don't know if this is happening to anyone else, but it used to be that I could type in 'google' and it'd bring me to google's home page. Similarly, 'penny arcade forums' got me to the main forum page. 'woot' got me their homepage and so forth. Now, anything without a '.com' or it's relevant tag gets me Charters (my isp) 'we couldn't find this site, is this what you're looking for?' page. And it's even happening when I add .com sometimes! I didn't upgrade to the new Firefox (the beta floating around), is that potentially why? Because that doesn't make sense in my mind. And this doesn't sound like it's a virus, unless it's something that got into my bookmarks and broke the settings. And yes, the Awesome bar still brings up favorites as I type relevant words, but I really miss the instant search feature.

Void Slayer

http://www.technipages.com/firefox-change-address-bar-search-provider.html

Your address bar search provider was changed, I never had the capability your talking about, though i only used http://www.google.com/search?&q=. In my case it would bring up google search results if I typed a non-url in the address bar. If you updated firefox this information could have been lost or some Browser Help Objects or add-ons can change these settings.

Edit: From your description there is probably no address bar search provider available so it is acting as though the string you type is a url and your DNS provider is redirecting you to a search page after the url is not found rather then giving you a real URL not found result. If you go to doesnotexisturl.org your most likely to be redirected to your DNS provider as well.

MetroidZoid

That did it, thanks!