FireFox redirecting to Bing when page not found

[JS_Harris]

I just had a first occur, a dead link I visited re-directed me to Bing's search engine instead of Google's. Apparently visiting dead links or typing in pages that don't exist now results in Bing's search page appearing and not Google's. I didn't make the change myself anywhere so was this change made in an "automatic update" or some such?

[encyclo]

Are you talking about non-existent pages on a real domain, or typing in invalid/inexistent domain names? If it is the latter, it's most likely to be your ISP intercepting the traffic and doing the redirect for you.

Here's an earlier thread discussing a similar issue: [webmasterworld.com...]

[JS_Harris]

Thanks for the info encyclo, I missed that thread in my search before posting.

It seems to be both when I follow a link to a non-existent page AND when I type in an invalid domain name. For good measure I typed in a page of my own site that has never existed and I was directed to Bing.

That last part bothers me not only because i'm not sold on Bing yet but because I have a 404 page set up on my server that is being ignored. I went through all of my browser settings and found nothing but when I cleared all sessions and deleted the cache everything went back to normal.

I went through some recent history and re-visited sites (I only visit 12 or so with my work computer) to see if something would trigger the behavior again, nothing did. My ISP being the cause seems most likely right now though the re-directing seems to have been happening on my machines end, not on the ISP's.

[edited by: JS_Harris at 7:06 am (utc) on June 15, 2009]

[StoutFiles]

I don't think an ISP could do a 404 redirect...

If so, that is a BIG problem for the future.

[bwnbwn]

For good measure I typed in a page of my own site that has never existed and I was directed to Bing.

JS_Harris there is something set up incorrectly with the 404 redirect as the 404 custom page is not ignored or redirected. I just tested it to make sure.

When I get a non-existent or deleted domain name I am redirected to windstream our service provider but my custom 404 resolves to the custom 404 page.

Check through your set up again it should show the custom 404 page.