diff --git a/src/Symfony/Component/DomCrawler/Crawler.php b/src/Symfony/Component/DomCrawler/Crawler.php
index 826b74e7e3..864340dbda 100644
--- a/src/Symfony/Component/DomCrawler/Crawler.php
+++ b/src/Symfony/Component/DomCrawler/Crawler.php
@@ -197,7 +197,7 @@ class Crawler extends \SplObjectStorage
         $dom->validateOnParse = true;
 
         // remove the default namespace to make XPath expressions simpler
-        @$dom->loadXML(str_replace('xmlns', 'ns', $content), LIBXML_NONET);
+        @$dom->loadXML(str_replace('xmlns=', 'ns=', $content), LIBXML_NONET);
 
         libxml_use_internal_errors($current);
         libxml_disable_entity_loader($disableEntities);