fix my chrome!

October 18, 2011 7:00 PM

I'm using Chrome (14.0.835.202) on os x (10.7.2). For a while now, I've noticed that, typically, when I do a google search, wanting to just check the wikipedia page for that search term, I type the term in, along with the word wikipedia (such as "whatever wikipedia") in the past this always brought me to a search page with the whatever wikipedia page as the first hit, and now the following happens: for a second or two I get a result page that will show, as the first search item, the wikipedia page for "whatever," but, within a couple of seconds, the search result page changes (with my doing nothing) with other search results at the top (I just went through the first 8 pages of search results for "metafilter wikipedia" and the metafilter wikipedia page doesn't show up at all (although it did flash for a second before that result page refreshed and changed without being asked to!). This used to work like a charm for me, what's changed and how can I change it back? Things are normal in firefox, it responds as I expect it to...
posted by HuronBob to computers & internet (11 answers total)

Start typing the first few letters of the Wikipedia site ('en' is enough for me), press tab, then type in your search term to search Wikipedia directly. Works for all sorts of sites (eg Amazon).
posted by obiwanwasabi at 7:21 PM on October 18, 2011

You might have to manage your search engines first to get what obiwanwasabi is talking about. For whatever reason I don't have Wikipedia in my list, but do have a bunch of random, one off sites.
posted by sbutler at 7:25 PM on October 18, 2011

obiwan.. that doesn't work for me... typing anything followed by the tab, takes me to the next link in the window...
posted by HuronBob at 7:25 PM on October 18, 2011

hmmm.. I moved wikipedia to the top list. You can only choose one "default" and that's not what I'm wanting...

Still baffled!
posted by HuronBob at 7:43 PM on October 18, 2011

You don't need to make it default. Remove whatever you've done :) Add a new one in the "Other search engines" section:

Name: Wikiedpa
Keywork: wiki (or whatever you want to have to type before hitting tab)
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%s

After that, you should be able in the URL bar to type: wiki [tab] search query
posted by sbutler at 7:48 PM on October 18, 2011

What happens if you google "wikipedia"? Maybe you've inadvertently added it to the personal blocklist extension. I see the same behaviour in Chrome after adding it to mine: instant search briefly shows the entry as the first result, but after hitting enter it's gone.
posted by Lorin at 7:54 PM on October 18, 2011

you got it, Lorin! Thanks! That was it, and I have no clue as to why I might have done that!

And, to all the rest...thanks for the tips and your time!
posted by HuronBob at 8:55 PM on October 18, 2011

/wonders who set his Chrome up to search Wikipedia, then
/looks suspiciously at nonchalant cat
posted by obiwanwasabi at 9:33 PM on October 18, 2011

obi... thanks, I forgot to blame it on the cat! of course!
posted by HuronBob at 9:39 PM on October 18, 2011

Right on. The same thing happened to me with another site, they sure put the block link annoyingly close to the actual site link.
posted by Lorin at 9:57 PM on October 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

pro-tip: 99% of the time you don't even need to add 'wikipedia' to a search to get the Wikipedia article for the thing you're searching for.
posted by delmoi at 11:30 PM on October 18, 2011 [1 favorite]