diff --git a/pysolr.py b/pysolr.py
index 57891676..7b4a7c63 100644
--- a/pysolr.py
+++ b/pysolr.py
@@ -1307,7 +1307,7 @@ def _get_url(self, url, params=None, headers=None):
         if params is None:
             params = {}
         if headers is None:
-            headers = {}
+            headers = {'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'}
 
         resp = requests.get(url, data=safe_urlencode(params), headers=headers)
         return force_unicode(resp.content)