Use Custom Search Engines To Turn Off Google Instant

If you like Google Instant sometimes, but want to turn it off for some searches, reader lastlifelost shows us how to do so using Firefox and Chrome’s custom search engines.

Instant Search is great but breaks the functionality of some things like this little add-on that Lifehacker highlighted a while back.

My solution was to create a custom default search engine that temporarily turns off Google Instant. In Chrome, right click the Search Bar, edit Search Engines, and create a custom search with http://www.google.com/search?complete=0&q=%s as the URL, and whatever you’d like for the keyword. Now, when you search for something you wind up on a page without Instant, allowing you to do subsequent searches with Instant off, as well. If you reload Google.com, however, Instant turns back on.

You can do this in Firefox as well, using the same URL. It’s pretty handy for those add-ons that don’t work with Google Instant, but you want to pick and choose when you want them to work.