Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Adding Your Own Search Engine
Here are the necessary steps. These steps make fundamental changes to a
system file, and while this is generally safe to do, you should follow the steps
and ensure you type the commands exactly as specified.
1.
For the purposes of these steps, we're going to use Duck Duck Go as the
replacement search engine, and we're going to replace Bing. Start by get-
ting the IP address of the search engine you want to use—open a Terminal
window (open Finder, select the Applications list, and then in the list of
applications double-click Terminal within the
UTILITIES
folder), and type
PING
followed by the address of the search engine. For example, for Duck Duck
Go I'd type the following:
PING WWW.DUCKDUCKGO.COM
2.
Don't worry about all the results, but simply look at the first line, which
will read something like
PING DUCKDUCKGO.COM (46.51.197.88)
. You're interested
in the numbers—
46.51.197.88
—so make a note of them.
3.
At the Terminal, hit
CONTROL
+
C
to kill the
PING
command, and type the fol-
lowing, which will open the
HOSTS
system file in the
NANO
text editor (type
your login password when prompted):
SUDO NANO /PRIVATE/ETC/HOSTS
4.
In the file that you open, add the following line to the very bottom on a
line of its own, ensuring you hit a carriage return at the end of the line:
46.51.197.88 WWW.BING.COM
Obviously, you should replace the IP address (the series of four numbers
separated by periods) with the one you wrote down earlier, although don't
change anything else in the line—for an example from my test Mac, see
5.
Hit
CONTROL
+
O
to save the file, and tap
RETURN
to confirm you want to save
it. Then hit
CONTROL
+
X
to quit Nano, and then close the Terminal window.
6.
Open Safari, and hit
COMMAND
+
,
(comma) to access its preferences. Select
the General tab, and on the Default Search Engine drop-down list, select
Bing.
The changes should take effect from the next time you use Safari, but if not,
reboot the computer.
