Getting Google Search Results on an OpenDNS Network (Firefox)

(related to the Firefox / Bing fix)

If you have a network that uses Opendns to serve as a dns server, then when you type some incomplete addresses into the url bar, Opendns will give you results from its search engine instead of the Google search results that you probably want.  Also Opendns sometimes slows way down when it gets an address that it can’t digest.  To speed up such searches, and get your Google search results back, follow these directions.

We just followed these directions exactly on Firefox 3.6.6 and everything worked okay.

type “about:config” in the url bar… click “I’ll be careful, I promise!” in the “This might void your warranty” notification box.

type “keyword” in the “filter bar”

you should now have a few choices—right click on “keyword.URL” … click “modify” … paste the following text into the box …

http://74.125.95.105/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=

This works by bypassing opendns translation of “www.google.com” to 74.125.95.105.

Here is an example of different results based on just typing “hello” into the url bar.

This is the result with keyword.url as http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=

This is the result with keyword.url as http://74.125.95.105/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=

By the way, these directions will not help you to bypass opendns except to get to a Google search.

** We tested these directions, and they worked **.