It’s been a couple of days since Google started SSL secured search. You can notice it on Google’s homepage (https://www.google.com where the Google logo has a small ‘SSL’ text written in the top-right. But most of us never go to Google’s homepage every time we want to perform a search. We use the ‘Search bar’ which is available in all major browsers. Now to incorporate the SSL awesomeness to searches made through the search bar, we need to tweak some settings. Here I have showed the trick for Mozilla Firefox.

Enabling SSL secured Google search into Firefox’s search bar:

» Open Firefox’s configuration options by typing in ‘about:config’ in the address-bar.

» In the ‘Filter:’ text-box, type-in ‘keyword.url’ and the associated entry will get narrowed down in the results.

» Double-click the ‘keywords.url’ entry to change its value. In the small window that appears, replace ‘http://’ with ‘https://’ and click OK.

» Now, download this addon: Add to search bar. Then go to https://www.google.com , right-click in the search box and select ‘Add to Search bar…’

» In a small window that pops up, provide a name for the new search engine. For eg. “Google SSL”

» Now select this search engine from the ‘Search Bar’ context menu.

You’re done. Now whenever you use Firefox’s search bar, the search will be SSL secured.