Microsoft Edge Change Default Search Engine | Pro Guide
It is not necessary to use only Bing search engine in your Edge browser. You can use the most popular Google search engine in your Edge browser. Here are methods to change Microsoft Edge default search engine on desktop as well as on mobile phone.
Settings Location
Click Ellipsis or three dots … on top right of browser window to access ‘Settings and More’ (or press Alt+F) → Settings → Privacy, search and services → Services (bottom of the page) → Address bar and search.
→ Watch Video Tutorial below.
Select Your Favorite Search Engine in Address Bar of Edge Browser
Click the drop-down list of search engines next to ‘Search engine used in the address bar’ option. You can select your favorite search engine from the list such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, DuckDuckGo, Yandex.
What if Your Desired Search Engine is Not Listed?
In the list of search engines, if you do not see your favorite search engine, Edge browser allows you to add any of your favorite search capable websites.
Using preferred method, first perform a search in a new tab using that search engine. The search engine or website you used to search will now appear in the list of options, you can select.
With the second method, click on ‘Manage search engines’ option and select ‘Add’ button. In the menu, enter name of your new search engine (ex. AOL) and enter its root domain in keyword field (aol.com) and its designated URL link (http://search.aol.com/aol/search?q=%s&s_it=opensearch) and hit Add button. Through this method you can make YouTube, Twitter, Amazon, AliExpress etc as your default search engine in Edge browser. URL links for some popular sites are as following.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s&page={startPage?}&utm_source=opensearch
Twitter: https://twitter.com/search?q=%s
DuckDuckGo: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s
You can get more help, from the Microsoft support article about default search engine in edge browser.
To test your new default search engine, type any search term in address bar of web browser.
How to Create Search Shortcuts for Using YouTube, Twitter, Yahoo, Amazon as Search Engine in Edge Browser?
You can create a quick shortcut for any search capable website, you often use to search certain things. For example, if you often use Amazon to search products, then you can create a shortcut to use browser address bar as Amazon search bar without opening Amazon website.
Search shortcuts are very useful as your default search engine remains Bing, but you can quickly use any other website or other search engine in Edge browser.
Example of Creating YouTube Search Shortcut in Edge Browser
For example, you often search videos on YouTube, so let’s create a shortcut for YouTube search. Navigate to following settings in Edge.
Click three dots … on top right corner of screen in Edge browser → Settings → Privacy, search and services → Services (bottom of the page) → Address bar and search → Manage search engines.
Click ‘Add’ button on this page to add search engines. In the popup window, type or paste following text.
Search engine: type ‘YouTube’
Keyword: type any unique, short and easy letters as shortcut; for example enter ‘dozro’
URL with %s in place of query: In this field, type or paste proper search URL of the website. If you don’t know, open YouTube website, perform a search such as ‘hi’ then copy the URL form address bar, paste it here and then replace ‘hi’ with %s. So, instead of above process, you can simply enter this search URL of YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s in the field. Click Save.
To test the shortcut, I will enter my shortcut text ‘dozro’ keyword inside address bar of Edge.
You will notice that as soon as you type the keyword (shortcut), browser will display ‘Press Tab to search’ text inside address bar.
So, I will press search tab on keyboard and browser will replace Bing search with YouTube search in the address bar and ‘Search YouTube’ text will start appearing in left, inside address bar. Now type any search term in the address bar to perform direct search in YouTube.
Change Default Search Engine in Microsoft Edge on Mobile Phone
To change default search engine in Microsoft Edge mobile, click three dots on bottom, then Settings, and select General then Select Search Engine.
Choose any option such as Google, Yahoo, Bing.
However, here is method to add any other website such as YouTube, Vimeo, Walmart or Google Translate as default search engine.
In mobile phone, click three dots, then ‘Change menu’ option, select the ‘View Desktop site’ option. Open any search capable website such as YouTube in Microsoft Edge, In YouTube address bar, perform any search.
You can see that now YouTube is appearing as a Search Engine option. Just select it.
URLs of Popular Websites for Search Engine Shortcuts in Edge
Similarly, you can add more search shortcuts for other websites. After clicking on ‘Add’ you will fill relevant fields – for example in ‘Search engine’ field enter Twitter, Yahoo or Amazon – for the websites. However, for your ease, I have mentioned ‘search URLs’ for some popular websites, as follows.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=%s
Twitter: https://twitter.com/search?q=%s
Yahoo: https://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&fr=crmas_sfp&p=%s
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s
Google Books: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=%s
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/search?q=%s
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=%s
Google Translate: https://translate.google.com/?source=osdd&sl=auto&tl=auto&text=%s&op=translate
Walmart: https://www.walmart.com/search?q=%s
Explore more helpful articles about Browser features and settings or visit Home page. Email us to suggest edits and for your feedback about this Article.
