SEO
How To Change Your Default Search Engine In Chrome, Edge, Firefox & Safari
Using the search engine you like best is a preference many internet users don’t take lightly.
But it can also be tricky to configure the browser(s) you use to operate with the search engine you prefer by default each time.
So, if you want to change your default search engine to Google or any other major search engine within a specific web browser, follow the guide below. You’ll realize that changing it is a simple and fast process that greatly impacts your web-browsing experience.
Whether you use Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Microsoft Edge, here’s how to set your preferred search engines, regardless of your device.
Change Default Search Engine In Google Chrome
Here’s how to change your default search engine in Google Chrome.
Open the Chrome browser.
Click the three solid dots in the top right corner of the browser window. This is located below where the window’s X button would be on a machine using Windows, or below the down-facing arrow that opens the Tabs menu on a Mac.
If you’re signed into Chrome, it’s located next to your Google profile’s thumbnail.
Select Settings.
Click the Search engine section on the left-hand side of the page to reveal the search engine menu.
Then click the down arrow where it says Search engine used in the address bar to reveal the different options available without manually adding a different search engine not already listed.
Screenshot from Google Chrome, February 2023Select your default search engine from the list that includes Google, Ecosia, Yahoo, Bing, or DuckDuckGo.
Note: If you’ve tried to set your search engine, but it doesn’t work, you may have malware. Get help restoring your Chrome settings.
Add, Edit, Or Remove Other Search Engines
To add, edit, or remove other search engines from the list, click the Manage search engines and site search arrow below the default search engine list.
To Add A Search Engine
Scroll down below the list of default Search engines.
At Other search engines, click Add.
Screenshot from Google Chrome, February 2023You’ll be prompted to fill out the search engine name, shortcut, and URL.
Screenshot from Google Chrome, February 2023Filling Out Text Fields To Add A Search Engine In Chrome
The Search engine field should be the label or name of the search engine (i.e., Brave, Yandex, Swisscows, etc.).
The Shortcut field should be the text shortcut you want to use to engage the search engine via your browser bar.
This allows you to enter the keyword in the address bar for quick, easy access. (Of course, you can still just type your search query in the address bar to use the default search engine, too.)
“The URL with %s in place of query” field should include:
- the web address for the search engine’s results page.
- use %s where the query would go.
To find and edit the web address of the results page:
- Go to the search engine you want to add.
- Do a search.
- Copy and paste the web address of the search results page into the URL field. The address for the search results page is different from the website address.
- For example, if you search for [football], the Google search results URL is “http://www.google.com/search?q=football”.
- Replace the search term in the URL with %s.
- For example, if you were using the Google search results URL, your search engine address would be “http://www.google.com/search?q=%s”.
To Set A Default Search Engine, Edit, Or Delete
Click the Manage search engines and site search button right below the Search engine used in the address bar button.
Then, scroll down to the list of search engines and click the three-dot icon on the right of the search engine you want to set to default, edit, or delete.
It will open a little box offering the user to “Make default” or “Delete” the listed search engine we are altering.
There is also a small pencil icon next to the three dots that will allow you to edit the current input, whether that be the search engine name, shortcut, or URL.
Use the pencil icon to edit the current inputs or the three-dot icon to make a search engine the default – or delete it from the list.
Screenshot from Google Chrome, February 2023Change Default Search Engine In Firefox
Follow these steps to change your default search engine in Firefox.
Open the Firefox browser.
Click the hamburger menu (three solid lines) in the top-right corner of the browser window.
Select Settings from the dropdown menu.
Screenshot from Firefox, February 2023Selecting Settings will open a new tab within the same Firefox window.
On the left-side navigation, click on Search with the magnifying glass icon to access the various search-related features within Firefox.
Scroll down to the Default Search Engine section and click the drop-down menu to reveal the six different search engines that can be used as the default for the browser.
Screenshot from Firefox, February 2023Select the search engine you want to be your default, and it updates immediately (no saving of the settings is needed).
To Add A Search Engine
To add a search engine not available in the above dropdown, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the Find more search engines link (below a variety of other customized options, including search bar options, search suggestions, and search shortcuts).
Screenshot from Firefox, February 2023Click on Find more search engines, select the add-on(s) you want to add, and click Add to Firefox.
You can search for the search engine you are looking for or browse the extensive list shown by Firefox.
Screenshot from Firefox, February 2023You will then be asked to give permission to add the add-on to the browser.
Once it has been added, it will show up in the list of available search engines under Default Search Engine.
To Remove A Search Engine
Scroll below the Search Shortcuts section and click on the search engine you want to remove and highlight.
Then, click the “Remove” button in the bottom right corner of that section.
Screenshot from Firefox, February 2023Note: If you remove a search engine that you added yourself and change your mind, you’ll have to add it again (the steps are above this section).
If you remove any of the search engines that come with Firefox by default, click Restore Default Search Engines to bring them back.
Change Default Search Engine In Microsoft Edge
Edge, Microsoft’s latest web browser, is a full reboot of its legacy Internet Explorer browser – which the company announced in June 2022 will no longer be fully supported.
Since Microsoft recommends users get Edge and use IE Mode if they want to return to the interface and functionality of Internet Explorer, we will explain how to change your default browser solely to Microsoft’s fully supported browser, Edge – and not to IE.
Here’s how to change your default search engine in Microsoft Edge:
Open the Microsoft Edge browser.
Go to the search engine website you want to default to (e.g., www.google.com).
Click on the three dots in the top right corner of the browser window under the X button.
Slide down and click Manage Add-ons.
Screenshot from Microsoft Edge, February 2023Once you’ve clicked on Settings, click Privacy, Search, and Services on the left-side panel.
Then scroll to the bottom of the page where it says Address bar and search.
Screenshot from Microsoft Edge, February 2023Once the Privacy, Search, and Services menu opens, and choose the default search engine from the dropdown menu next to Search engine used in the address bar.
Screenshot from Microsoft Edge, February 2023All search engines that have been used in the browser will show up as a possible default option.
If the search engine you want to designate as the default does not show up, search for it in the address bar, then go back and look – it should be an option to choose as default after that.
Change Default Search Engine In Safari For Desktop
Here’s how to change your default search engine in Safari for desktop computers.
Open the Safari browser and go to the Safari menu in the upper-left corner.
Select Preferences from that dropdown.
Once the Preferences window opens, click the Search button with the magnifying glass icon across the top menu.
Click on the search engine you want to make your default.
Change Default Search Engine In Safari For iPhone
Open Settings on your iPhone.
Scroll directly down to the Safari button with the logo and an advance arrow.
Within the Setting tab, go under the Search menu and click where it says Search Engine to pick from the default search engine options.
Change Default Search Engine In Android
On your Android phone or tablet, open the Google Chrome app.
To the right of the address bar, tap More and then Settings.
Under Basics, tap Search engine.
Select the search engine you want to use.
Recently visited search engines will be added as your default search engine options.
Conclusion
Regardless of the device, operating system, or browser you’re using, setting and using the default search engine you favor most impacts your results and the types of search queries you use.
It also has an immediate and long-lasting impact on your everyday web experience.
Because of this, knowing how to easily change your default search engine across any device, operating system, and browser is important.
Just like different browsers offer different experiences, so do search engines. And each one leans into different features and characteristics to add value to its users and separate itself from the competition.
Search engines constantly strive to provide the best results and information through the most satisfying user experience.
These are both crucial for customer satisfaction and loyalty. These factors also separate the best search engines from the not-so-good ones.
Update the browser(s) you use to work better for you using the abovementioned steps. Update your default search engine, and (hopefully) you won’t have to revisit it again anytime soon.
More Resources:
Featured Image: Golubovy/Shutterstock
![7 Pieces of Content Your Audience Really Wants to See [New Data]](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/7-Pieces-of-Content-Your-Audience-Really-Wants-to-See.jpgkeepProtocol-400x240.jpeg "7 Pieces of Content Your Audience Really Wants to See [New Data]")
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SEO
OpenAI Experiences Outage Affecting ChatGPT Users
OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Labs experienced an outage today. Mobile users report receiving the dreaded “ChatGPT is at capacity right now” message and its outage limerick. ChatGPT Plus subscribers can receive a subscriber login link, which would typically bypass any capacity issues. That option also appears to be broken.
Desktop users receive a link to the incident page for this outage, which shows OpenAI began investigating the issue at 9:41 a.m. PDT. They discovered the root cause of the issue and are working on a resolution.
Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023The OpenAI Status page shows that in addition to ChatGPT, Labs is having an outage related to an underlying capacity failure. OpenAI is adding extra capacity to resolve this issue. Paid labs traffic has been restored, and they are working towards restoring free traffic.
Screenshot from OpenAI, March 2023DownDetector also has received thousands of reports from ChatGPT users about the outage, which began several hours ago.
Screenshot from DownDetector, March 2023ChatGPT Plus users are particularly frustrated because the premium pricing plan includes “General access to ChatGPT, even during peak times.”
Some users are turning to the OpenAI Playground while OpenAI resolves the issues with ChatGPT. It offers a chat mode (currently in beta) that can use your choice of GPT-3 or CODEX models.
Screenshot from OpenAI, March 2023New accounts receive an initial $18 credit for the OpenAI Playground. Once you reach your usage limits, you must pay for additional credits. Prices are per 1,000 tokens, where 1,000 tokens are equal to about 750 words. Pricing varies based on the language model and context needed.
ChatGPT users can subscribe to updates from the incidents page to be notified when OpenAI has resolved the issue.
Featured Image: Vitor Miranda/Shutterstock
SEO
Google Explains Why Sites Should Combine Structured Data
Google’s Lizzi Sassman answered a question in a Google SEO Office hours session about whether it’s okay to combine different structured data types.
The answer illuminated an important point about how Google interprets structured data and whether it’s better to combine structured data or two separate them out.
Combining multiple structured data is called nesting.
What is Nesting?
Structured data is basically about high level data types (called Types) and the attributes of those Types (called Properties).
It’s kind of like with HTML where the main HTML building blocks of a webpage are called Elements and every element has properties that modify them that are called “attributes.”
The HTML of a webpage begins by communicating that it’s an HTML webpage like this:
<HTML>
Similarly, a structured data script begins by saying what the main structured data for the webpage is.
A recipe structured data on a webpage that is about a recipe looks like this:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org/",
"@type": "Recipe",
Nesting is the addition of other structured data types within the main structured data.
So if the page is about Reviews, then the main structured data should begin like this:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org/",
"@type": "Review",
But what about when the page is about a recipe and it has a review?
Do you create two structured data scripts?
Or do you combine the two structured data types?
Lizzi Sassman shares that there is a right and a wrong way to do it.
Is Combining Structured Data Allowed?
Structured data follows a logical set of rules. Once the rules are learned it’s easy to make sense of structured data.
This question is about the organization of structured data and how that impacts how Google interprets it.
This is the question that was asked:
“Is it allowed to add one structured data inside another type of structure data? For example, adding carousel structured data inside Q & A structured data.”
Lizzi Sassman answered:
“Yep. Nesting your structure data can help us understand what the main focus of the page is.
For example, if you put recipe and review at the same level, it’s not as clear as telling us that the page is a recipe with a nested review.
This means that the primary purpose of the page would be a recipe and that the review is a smaller component of that.
As a tip, always check the specific feature documentation to see if there’s any more notes about combining various structure data types.
Right now, the only supported carousel features are course, movie, recipe, and restaurant.”
Structured Data Tells Google What a Page is About
This is really interesting because what Lizzi is saying is that the structured data helps Google understand what a webpage is about.
But if you have two separate structured data scripts on the same webpage it makes it harder for Google to understand what the “focus” of the webpage is about.
She advises that it’s best to combine them so that the first part says what the webpage is about.
So if the webpage is about recipes, the structured data should start like this:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org/",
"@type": "Recipe",
Google’s Search Central documentation about JSON-LD structured data discusses nesting:
“JSON-LD* (Recommended)
A JavaScript notation embedded in a <script> tag in the <head> and <body> elements of an HTML page.The markup is not interleaved with the user-visible text, which makes nested data items easier to express, such as the Country of a PostalAddress of a MusicVenue of an Event.
Also, Google can read JSON-LD data when it is dynamically injected into the page’s contents, such as by JavaScript code or embedded widgets in your content management system.”
What the above quoted section from Google’s documentation means, in plain English, is that a webpage that is about a musical event (using the Event) structured data type, can also include additional data types for the music venue and the postal address.
The webpage in the above example is about an Event, not the venue of the event.
So the JSON-LD script that contains the Event structured data would begin like this:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Event",
Event is a structured data type:
And the Postal Address for where the event takes place is also a structured data type:
Communicate the Focus of the Webpage
Sometimes it can feel like the “O” in SEO means optimizing a webpage for better rankings. But that’s not what search optimization is.
The “O” in SEO stands for means optimizing a webpage so that it’s easy for search engines to crawl and to understand what the webpage is about.
A webpage can’t rank without accomplishing those two optimizations.
Nesting structured data fits into that paradigm of “optimization” because it helps to make it clear what the focus of the webpage is.
Listen to the Google SEO Office Hours session at the 14:58 minute mark.
Featured image by Shutterstock/Asier Romero
SEO
The 9 Best Keyword Research Tools
Keyword research is a three-step process:
- Find keyword ideas that people are searching for
- Check their ranking difficulty
- Figure out the best way to rank
In this post, you’ll learn how to do these tasks with nine free keyword research tools.
The best free keyword research tools
Keyword Generator shows up to 150 keyword ideas. Just enter a broad topic, choose your target country, and hit “Find keywords.”
For example, search for “bitcoin,” and you’ll see the 100 most popular keywords containing that word from our database of over 19 billion keywords:
You also see a list of the 50 most popular questions people are searching for:
Each list also has a Keyword Difficulty (KD) score for the first 10 keywords. The closer this is to 100, the harder it’ll be to rank for the keyword (more on this in point #9).
Keyword ideas too broad? Feed them back into the generator
Let’s say you enter “bitcoin,” and the generator kicks back “bitcoin mining.” If you want to explore that topic further, feed it back into the generator. If you want to go even narrower, do another round.
Answer The Public uses autocomplete to find questions people are searching for. Just enter a broad topic, choose your target country, and hit “search.”
For example, search for “bitcoin” and you’ll see 392 keyword ideas split into five categories:
Each category (except for alphabeticals) visualizes the keyword ideas like this:
Unfortunately, it doesn’t show keyword search volumes. However, the red circles next to each keyword (supposedly) tell you whether it gets a high, average, or low number of monthly searches.
Looking for actual search volumes?
Paste keyword ideas from Answer The Public into Ahrefs’ free keyword generator. The first keyword on the list will usually be the one you entered, and you’ll see its search volume.
ChatGPT is a chatbot from OpenAI. It’s not very useful for keyword research as a whole, but it is useful for finding seed keyword ideas.
For example, if you ask for a list of terms related to bitcoin, here’s what it comes up with:
Not all these are good seed keywords because they’re too generic and have multiple meanings (e.g., “fork”), but some are.
For example, suppose you plug a not-so-obvious seed like “hashrate” into our free keyword generator. In this case, it looks like many people are searching for the hashrates of different mining hardware:
Unless you know the crypto industry inside out, you probably wouldn’t have thought of this seed keyword or discovered these keyword ideas.
Getting underwhelming results from your ChatGPT prompts?
Don’t ask for keyword ideas. Ask for terms related to a topic by starting your prompt with “give me a list of terms related to…”
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools shows all the keywords you currently rank for in the top 100. Just go to the Organic keywords report in Site Explorer.
There are many ways to use this report for keyword research, but one of my favorites is to find low-hanging page two rankings. To do this, filter for keywords in positions 11-20 and toggle the “Main positions only” switch.
As hardly anyone clicks on page two results, boosting your rankings for these keywords by just a few positions to page one can often massively boost traffic.
For example, we rank in position 11 for “pagerank”:
By applying our SEO checklist to this post or refreshing and republishing the content, we could likely hit the first page for this keyword and get way more traffic.
Not sure which keywords to prioritize?
If you have thousands of page two rankings, prioritize keywords with the highest “business potential.”
Google Keyword Planner is a keyword research tool for advertisers. But you can also use it to find keywords for SEO. It’s particularly useful for finding related keywords that don’t contain your seed keyword.
For example, search for “crypto,” and it kicks back ideas like “altcoin” and “safemoon coin”:
In fact, of the 880 keyword ideas found by Keyword Planner, 735 don’t contain the seed keyword “cryptocurrency.”
Unfortunately, Keyword Planner only gives search volume ranges instead of exact volumes (unless you’re running search ads). But you can always copy and paste ideas into Ahrefs’ free keyword generator for a more accurate estimate.
Looking for even more related keywords?
Instead of starting with a seed keyword, start with a seed website.
For example, suppose you use bitcoin.org as the seed site. In that case, you get some hyper-specific keyword ideas that you might easily overlook in “conventional” keyword research tools.
Google Search Console (GSC) shows how your website performs for its top 1,000 keywords in organic search. Just go to the Search results report.
There are many ways to use this report for keyword research, but one way is to find declining keywords that need your attention.
For example, if we compare the last three months’ performance for the Ahrefs Blog to the same period last year and sort the table by “Clicks Difference” from high to low, we can see that we’ve lost the most clicks from the query “google keyword planner”:
To try to fix this, we recently updated and republished our guide to Google Keyword Planner—and it worked.
Here are the clicks from that keyword for the past two months:
This shows how there’s sometimes more to gain from retargeting old keywords than going after new ones.
Don’t make the mistake of ignoring seasonality
Make sure to choose a year-over-year comparison period in GSC. Otherwise, you risk seeing skewed numbers due to seasonality.
For example, our traffic always dips in December when people are off enjoying the holiday season. If we were to compare the first and last six months of the year, the numbers would be skewed and might lead us astray.
Google Trends visualizes the relative search popularity of a keyword over time. It also shows related rising and breakout searches. This is useful for finding trending keywords.
For example, search for “ai content,” and you will see a massive spike in interest recently:
If you then scroll down to the “Related queries” section, you’ll see rising and breakout keywords like “ai content creator,” “open ai,” and “chatgpt”:
There’s often a delay before trending keywords like these appear in traditional keyword research tools, making Google Trends a neat way to find newly popular topics before your competitors.
Looking for specific ideas related to trending topics?
Just plug a rising topic back into Google Trends.
For example, if you put “chatgpt” (a rising topic from our search) into Google Trends, you see more specific things people are searching for around that topic.
SERP Checker shows the top-ranking pages for (almost) any keyword, plus useful SEO metrics for the top three pages. It’s particularly useful for understanding a keyword’s traffic potential.
For example, Keyword Generator shows that “best bitcoin mining rig” has an average monthly search volume of 500 in the U.S.:
But if you plug this keyword into SERP Checker, you see that the top three search results get between 1K and 1.8K estimated monthly search visits. That’s 2-4X more than the keyword’s search volume.
This happens because pages tend to rank for (and get traffic from) many keywords, not just one.
Because of this, the estimated search traffic to the top-ranking pages is usually a better proxy of a keyword’s true traffic potential than search volume. So it’s worth plugging promising keyword ideas into SERP Checker to better understand how much traffic you can get by ranking.
Do top-ranking pages get less traffic than the keyword’s search volume?
Traffic potential isn’t always higher than a keyword’s search volume. Sometimes, it’s lower.
For example, “how many people own bitcoin” gets an estimated 1.4K monthly searches in the U.S., but SERP Checker shows that the top-rankings get significantly less traffic than this—despite ranking for hundreds of keywords:
There are many reasons this can happen. In this case, it’s probably because Google answers the question on the SERP, so most searchers don’t need to click a result.
Keyword Difficulty (KD) Checker estimates how hard it will be to rank in the top 10.
For example, the KD score for “bitcoin” is 99/100, meaning it’s super hard to rank for:
Yet the KD score for “litecoin vs bitcoin” is only 9/100, so it should be quite easy to rank for:
That said, KD is based solely on backlinks. It doesn’t consider anything else that may affect ranking difficulty, such as content quality.
Because of this, a high KD score just means you’ll likely need lots of backlinks to compete. You should always investigate ranking difficulty further before going after a keyword.
Looking for a rough estimate of how many backlinks you need?
Check the estimate below the Keyword Difficulty (KD) score.
Free vs. paid keyword tools: how do they compare?
Free keyword research tools are super useful when you’re just starting out. Still, the number of keyword ideas and data they show will always pale compared to paid tools.
For example, search for “bitcoin” in our free keyword generator, and you’ll get 150 keyword ideas. But if you search for the same seed in our paid keyword research tool, Keywords Explorer, and go to the Matching terms report, you get 763,256 keyword ideas:
Plus, there are a bunch of filters to help you find the best ideas for your website.
For example, if you have a new website, you might want to find low-difficulty keywords with good search volume and traffic potential. You can do this in seconds by applying Keyword Difficulty (KD), volume, and Traffic Potential (TP) filters.
From there, you can easily check the top-ranking pages to assess the competition. Just click the “SERP” dropdown or click the keyword and scroll to the SERP overview:
Final thoughts
If you’re new to SEO, free keyword research tools will be enough to discover some good keyword ideas for your website. But once your website grows and the value of your time skyrockets, paid keyword research tools are worth every penny.
This is because paid keyword tools give you more data and allow for more efficient workflows, so you can find better keyword ideas in less time.
Looking to learn more about keyword research? Read our beginner’s guide to keyword research or watch this video:
Did I miss any good free keyword research tools? Ping me on Twitter.
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