Make better use of bookmarks and you won't need to use a search engine as a first-line phishing defense.

Just a suggestion. Search engines do supply their results with a level of confidence, and you're not wrong to use them like that.

This is my approach too, I've found that it's quite easy to bookmark pages liberally and then I can just locally search my bookmarks from the URL bar.

Doesn't your history already fill in this? Why the need to bookmark?

Not everyone uses Firefox.

On Chrome I think it is optimized so it always askes Google first.

Otherwise how would Google know all the pages you visit, and especially the ones you visit most?

On every browser I've used, results from history have been the first to autofill, but maybe it depends on OS or settings?

Bookmarks are like history that doesn't roll away.

Bookmarks were my obvious answer as well, but bookmarks are annoying to me. I don't like managing them and I don't like having the bar visible and I don't like having to remember to use the bookmark for things that have a bookmark, and the addressbar for things that don't have a bookmark.

It's a work-around, not an actual resolution, unless you already happen to like using bookmarks.

This is my approach: address-bar autocomplete only uses bookmarks as suggestions (well, and open tabs). I almost never open my bookmarks, nor feel the need to organize them. I can just type two or three letters (not necessarily the first few) to directly identify the (bookmarked) site that I want to go to.

Obviously that means I'm using split url/search fields in the address bar, or that wouldn't work. I also heavily use Firefox' keyword search to avoid doing a round-trip through a search engine if I already know which site I want to search, mostly using the same prefixes that DDG uses, so I don't need to adjust too much if I need to use a different computer.

This sounds pretty good. Thanks.

I have actually already split my address and search fields too, for a different reason. I got aggrevated with having the local machine names on my lan perform a public search, even though my local dns is configured to use only my opnsense router, which does resolve the local names correctly. Splitting off the search box makes the local names always do only what DNS says, and so I get my 3d printer instead of search results for it's name.

For that particular problem, going to "truenas" or "unifi" etc on my lan, the bookmarks are actually more convenient in nmost cases I have to admit! Especially with half of the services needing some special port number like unifi and jellyfin etc.

Additional searches above your tier are not expensive, 1.5 cents I believe. And there is an unlimited tier.

I use Kagi all the time for this kind of thing, and always wondered if it might be an issue. But in reality I don't actually end up using as many searches as I thought I would, like at most it's 30 a day (according to Kagi's stats), and even that only adds up to ~900 searches in a month. Always assumed it would be higher since I'm constantly searching stuff for my job, but I guess 30 is kind of a lot when you think about it.

So this may not be as big of an issue as you think. Should also keep in mind that higher search quality means you don't have to search as much in the first place, which leaves a larger buffer.

Alternatively you could just use "hashbangs" to search domains via google (!g), since I don't believe those cost you anything.

I haven't used bookmarks or even had the toolbar visible in 20 years, but only because of kagi I now had to add a bookmarks toolbar back, populate it, and consciously remember to use it for anything that it has, and only use the address bar for things it doesn't have.

This is not the worst thing in the world, but it is annoying to me and not a life upgrade.

Maybe the search results are better enough to make it worth it (on top of also paying money), or maybe not. I'm still determining that, but it's question and not a slam dunk.