Changing your default search provider in Internet Explorer 7 [GENERAL KNOWLEDGE SHARE]

So for those of you that might be interested in changing your default search provider in Internet Explorer 7 this quick walk through allows you to do it in a few simple steps.

So the first thing you need to do is open your browser. Once you do that you’ll see the default search provider in gray in the search window as shown below.

The next step is to click on the arrow to the right side of the search field and the magnifying glass so that the option menu shows up:

Once you do that you can select “Change Search Defaults” which will open the dialog box as shown below.

To choose a provider not shown or to create your own you’d choose the blue link Find more providers… at the bottom left corner of the dialog box. Choosing that link will cause the http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/searchguide/en-en/default.mspx?dcsref=http://runonce.msn.com/runonce2.aspx page to load as shown below.

On this page you can choose from the list of provided options to select from or to create one of your own. Choosing one of the defaults is as simple as clicking on them; for the remainder of this walk through we are going to create our own.

What you need to do is open another browsing window (either another tab in this open browser session or by opening a whole new session) and go to that search provider’s site by entering the URL; for our example we’ll use http://isearch.igive.com/ which brings us here:

The next step is to enter TEST (in all capital letters) into the site’s search field and search them out.

The results of that action are shown below.

What is important for us is the http://isearch.igive.com/search.cfm?q=TEST&cid=46258 address in the field at the top – we need to highlight that and copy all of that and paste it into the third step in the other browser session where we are doing the “Add Search Providers to Internet Explorer” work.

After you do that step 4 is to give this new provider a name – we are going to call ours “iGive Search to benefit WUAH” and click the INSTALL button.

Once you do that the following dialog box appears:

You want to put a check into the “Make this my default search provider” box and choose the Add Provider option.

When you do this you’ll notice the default search box in the upper right hand corner changes to:

You have successfully changed the default search provider for Windows Internet Explorer 7. Future searches will render their results from the new provider:

Technorati Tags: Internet Explorer 7,Search