Default Search Provider URL broken for Google in MDM managed Microsoft Edge

Question

We set the default search provider URL and URL for suggestions to Google via Intune/MEM (like I suspect many organisations do) and we've been running this way for over a year with no issues. All of a sudden every single search query is appended with "oq=" and then my search/keywords again which in turn is messing up the search. For example

If I wanted to search "hello" my search query ends up being "hellooq=hello" - WTH has caused this all of a sudden?!

Interestingly if I revert the Intune/MEM config profile and instead allow the user to override, you can then manually set the search provider to Google and it works as expected - I have no idea what's going and surely this is a bug?

Any ideas?

• I've tried all of the expected, resetting browser settings etc - keep in mind these are MEM/MDM managed devices and we have total control over them. I have confirmed this issue is affecting all devices in our organisation.

Answer 1

@Anonymous , our policy forces the search engine so it is applied under Computer Configuration > Microsoft Edge > Default Search Provider > Default search provider URL

As suggested above, I originally tested https://www.google.com/search?q={searchTerms} which worked and then changed to https://www.google.co.uk/search?q={searchTerms} which also works.

Answer 2

Thanks a lot for this, I spent the weekend trying to fix this and I'm still waiting to hear anything back from my first Microsoft support ticket raised (radio silence for a couple of days now) so great to see we were not the only one with the issue.

We raised a second support call and was told that it was an issue with a recent Edge update, however, I have a couple of InTune setups and only one of them is having the problem, our Group Policy based machines do not have the issue either. All these machines are running Edge version 98.0.1108.56.

I am testing the change to the short version of the search URL https://www.google.com/search?q={searchTerms} and search seems to be working as expected now. We are using .co.uk at the end as we are UK based. As mentioned above in @Noel Burgess post, I imagine using the full URL will give you regional search results but this is not important to us.

Answer 3

Still no official fix for this I dont think guys

Answer 4

Does it help to use a stripped-down URL string like "https://www.google.com/search?q={searchTerms}"? I don't find that the guff in the pre-populated URL helps at all, but it might make a difference in some situations, like non-English locales.

If you do this, you might have to set DefaultSearchProviderName and DefaultSearchProviderKeyword to avoid conflicting with the existing one.

Answer 5

Hi Firedog,

Thanks for replying - I wasn't aware that a stripped down URL such as that would work, I just went off what was documented online and within the MDM profile which I'll provide an image for below.

I've updated the 'Default Search Provider search URL' to the one you have suggested and will test. Below is an image of the settings I have configured, those highlighted are the ones that relate to the configurations discussed here and are set.

MS suggestion