Google international - bypass localized search

Monday, 23 June 2008

As you already know, Google is automatically redirecting to your country's Google domain. This is called geographic targeting. Google determines your geo location by searching your IP address in a IP-to-location database. But what if you're searching some code or english content and you're in Botswana? Google will favor Botswana results, and this is not always desirable.

The quick solution is to specifically search Google international at this URL

http://www.google.com/ncr

Simple and effective. NCR=No Country Redirection.

Note: as of July 2012 this trick seems to have stopped working. Google responds with HTTP redirect code 302 and redirects to

https://www.google.com, which is still localized.

Give us some social love (it really works now)!

Comments (2)

1. 15-07-2012 06:04

tom http://google localization

Like a million other English speakers living in Thailand, I find Google less and less usable. The suggestion above, use google.com/ncr gets redirected to some site where all text is in Thai. You need to be able to read Thai script to fix this apparently.

2. 17-09-2008 10:45

warcover

Thanks. Now if we can just find a way to permanently disable Google's incredibly annoying drop down text search assist box. Kill it under advanced options, there it is again next time you open the page. Also, is there a way to reclaim Youtube from country restricted content?