Do you mean the built-in Firefox search bar set to Google (typically a small g icon at the left end), or a Google add-on? I will assume the built-in bar.

Google is known to check your IP address and choose a "local" sites on that basis. If you are using a proxy, perhaps that might explain the change?

A typical thing to try in this situation is to delete your Google cookies. In this case, you'll need to delete cookies for both sites.

You can call up the cookie viewer either of these ways:

• right-click the page and choose View Page Info > Security > "View Cookies"
• (menu bar) Tools > Page Info > Security > "View Cookies"

In the dialog that opens, the current site name should appear in the filter box at the top (presumably google.nl). You can remove that site's cookies individually, and then edit the filter value to google.co.uk to get the list for that site and remove those.

Then try the search bar again. Any improvement?

A few other thoughts:

(1) If you click the "g" icon to the left of the search bar to drop down the list of search engines, are there multiple Google entries? If so, test the other ones.

(2) The built-in Google search engine plugin is located here by default:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\browser\searchplugins\google.xml

If you paste that into the Firefox address bar on a new tab and press Enter, then scroll down past the gibberish image data to the line that starts

<Url type="text/html" method="GET" template=

Does it show the .co.uk site as the template address?

Thanks very much for your help.

Unfortunately, this has not solved the problem.

At the end of the .xml file you refer to, I have the following entry:

<Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="https://www.google.com/" rel="searchform"/>

To the best of my knowledge, I am not using a proxy (my anti-virus and malware provider (Webroot) has confirmed that they are not using a proxy to provide that service) and a search of my IP address at www.whatismyip.com asserts that I am located in Great Britain (which I am!).

Still stumped.

Well, Google thinks it knows better than us...

Perhaps it would work better to install a search plugin specific to Google UK. This page has a couple of options:

http://mycroftproject.com/google-search-plugins.html

Look for these:

• Google UK (SSL)
• Google UK - the UK (SSL)

After installation, you probably need to use the search bar drop-down list to select the new search plugin from the bottom of the list.

You might also double-check your connection setting here:

"3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Options > Advanced > Network mini-tab > "Settings" button

The default "Use system proxy settings" should piggyback on your Windows/IE LAN settings, but you also can try "No proxy" to see whether that changes anything.

Many thanks for the help. The 'no proxy' setting didn't change how it worked, but I have added one of the mycroftproject plugins you suggested, which has worked.

Thank you.