Customise IE7 search to Google to your default country


When I had Internet Explorer 6 running, I had my homepage set to www.google.co.uk because I’m from England and like to have the option of searching pages from the UK or from the world. However I discovered when I installed IE7 that the search bar directly next to the address bar has the Google Search funtion in it, however it by default searches www.google.com and I just plainly didn’t want it.
I found a workaround 😉 Now you can use the Search bar up in IE7 to search the pages of where you live. So, if Jabez wants to search Malasia’s pages, he can type in anything he wants and he has the option to do that. If Squire wants to search New Zealands Google, he can do! 🙂
Note: this is only for users of Internet Explorer 7 – it won’t work on any other browser 🙂 I cannot accept any responsibility from any damage this may cause. I’m pretty damn sure it’s safe but just make sure you backup your things just in case though.
OK, bit lengthy but this works. You will need to download Resource Hacker which lets you open up EXE files and other types of Windows files and extract resources from them and also change some parts of the code in the files. ResHacker is available from here or in Simplified Chinese then you guys can get it here
Then, you need to download the Google patch which will then let you set Google as your default search engine in IE7. You can normally download this directly from Google.com (there is a box pointing up to the top right of your screen) or if you can’t find it, just download it from my server here instead. You then need to open up the file into Resource Hacker so that you can edit the properties.
If you stuff it up, don’t worry. Whenever you save it’ll always save an original and save the new version as a seperate file.
1) When you’ve opened the file in ResHacker, expand “String Table” and then expand “16” and then click on the little flower thing that’s labelled “0”.
2) You may need to open up Internet Explorer and find out the default address for your local Google. For the UK, it is www.google.co.uk and for example, Google for New Zealand is www.google.co.nz. (This page may help)
3) In the ResHacker window, under line “253” where the web address is, replace the domain name suffix with your local Google, so you should just replace the “com” part with “co.uk” or “co.nz” depending on where you are.
4) Click “Compile Script”, and then File and Save. Close Resource Hacker.
5) Double click on the file you have just made (make sure it does NOT have “original” in the filename) and run the file. Internet Explorer should open up with a success message.
6) Try searching for something using the Search bar in IE7 and see if it works.
Now, hopefully that should end up with you having a localised search in IE7. If it doesn’t work, just run or download again the Google patch and use that instead. Leave me some comments and let me know how it’s gone 🙂
Posted in Beta News, Windows Vista | 8 Comments »
November 27th, 2005 at 10:19 pm
I haven’t try your method, but I suppose changing the SearchScope in the registry will have the same effect:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchScopes\Google
Under URL, add .MY or .UK or .NZ behind google.com, thus the full link should be:
http://www.google.com.my/search?sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=utf8&oe=utf8&q=%s
Do the same for:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchScopes\Google
December 10th, 2005 at 9:21 pm
If you noticed Google automatically redirects you to .co.uk.
http://www.google.com
April 29th, 2006 at 4:10 am
If you do exactly as directed in this article, when you use the search, it always returns results for searching on the string “%s” rather your search term.
April 29th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
If you click the arrow by the search box you will see you have two Googles. Change Googles and delete the other.
July 4th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
That rocks! I wanted to use the search box in ie7, but didn’t get the results I wanted with .com. Stupid that google don’t offer localized search code as standard tbh. Thanks.
August 31st, 2006 at 7:14 pm
Neal
go back to the resource hacker and change the %$ to {searchTerms}
like this
253, “http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=ie7&ie=utf8&oe=utf8&q={searchTerms}”
this works for me!
October 25th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Does anyone know how to re-create what google has with the ability to default to the country you are currently in? Our site has content specific to each country, and would like to offer this to our users.
October 26th, 2006 at 1:03 am
Its based on IP’s so i dont know if you could?