How do I automatically keep English as my default language in Google when overseas?
 

I am an English speaker and, regrettably, a few basic pleasantries in many languages aside, only an English speaker. I use Firefox as my preferred browser with the built in Google search bar. Google is also my favorite search engine.

The problem is that when I travel abroad to a country with a foreign language, Google figures this out and automatically assumes that I understand and would prefer to read the local language. For example, I am in Argentina right now. When I do a Google search, it throws me into Google Argentina with Spanish everywhere. Some of the search results still point to English language pages, but the information at the top is purely in Spanish. For example:
It looks like I should be able to change my "Preferencias" to make English the default, but this is only a temporary fix. And amazingly, in this instance, http://www.google.com.ar/ doesn't have an English language choice; the options jump from "elmer fudd" to "eslovaco."

Other than bookmarking http://www.google.com/intl/en/ and manually opening it up in a new tab every time I need to do a search from abroad, is there any way to make English my one and only language in Google so that I don't have to fight a language battle every time I travel to a non-English speaking country?

I understand your frustration. Although I read French, most of my searches need to be done in English and the results are much different if done on the French Google site, thus I don't appreciate being automatically switched to the other site.

I just looked at Google's help section and am going to give the google.com/webhp suggestion a try.

http://www.google.com/support/bin/an...73&ctx=u2u_873

habla inglés ;)

Sorry, don't know why it's not holding, it should.

Whoops. Even this gringo should know better; I wouldn't get very far without "Habla (usted) inglés?" ;) Of course, I usually have my Mexican-American wife to tag along as my interpreter.

Still, surely there must be a way to permanently set English (or another language of choice) as the automatic default so that we Google users don't have to manually re-set our default language every time we travel abroad to a country that speaks a different language.

Do you have a gmail account and a customized U.S. google news page (news.google.com)? I wonder if that's the workaround, and you can use the search feature from the news page (gives you the option of searching news or web pages). I was in Beijing for 10 days and don't recall getting a China-based search engine, and it surely would have jumped out. Why don't you try that and see if it's a workaround?

Make sure under Tools > Internet Options > Languages that English is the only language showing.

Also on your Google Toolbar, click Settings (far right), then Options, and make sure Translate Menu is unchecked.

In Firefox, when I got to Tools > Options > Languages, the only languages (in order of preference) listed are:
I don't know how to get there. My Google Toolbar is in the far right of Firefox, to the right of where you enter a web address. The only things I can do to it are to click on the left side of the toolbar and "Manage Search Engines" or click on a magnifying glass icon on the right which takes me to a "Firefox Start"/Google page. I don't see anything about a "Translate Menu."

Type in google.com.ar and then select Google in English which will be immediately visible. Once you revert to English you can click on preferences and select your interface language as English. It will stay that way after that.

If you right click at the top of the page, below the address bar, does Google appear ? If it does, click it and the full toolbar will appear, and hopefully Settings to the right.

I have been struggling with the Google blog software, too. In Japan, it always comes up in kanji. I'll give this a try and hope it carries over to the blog program.

Thanks.

JR

You may need to delete your cookies (at least all those pertaining to Google) before you can get it to stick.

I haven't had your problem with google.com (the US version, which is where you want to go), perhaps because I keep that link, as well as the links google.uk and google.fr on the links bar on my toolbar.

But I did have the same problem once with the MS support website: every time I tried to search there, it took me to a page in French. Had to delete all my MS cookies before I could get it to default to the US site.

It's not just the language that gets localised - it's also the searches and of course the advertising.

So when I am in Tokyo I get text in kanji and search results which weight Japanese companies, I think.

I solved this by using http://merjis.com/local_google_search which lets you specify both a country and a language ... although whether they keep the query data and do anything with it, I don't know.

That site points to a Google tool used for proofing ads: https://adwords.google.com/select/Ad...ingPreviewTool

The latter is quite interesting to play with, and quite worrying when you see how Google manipulates our view of the world. Try sticking, say, "headphones" in as a search. The Americans see Best Buy a few down the list from the top ... the Australians see a local company right at the top, even before wikipedia.

When abroad, I've programmed myself not even to bother going to google.com any more; I go directly to google.com/ncr (No Country Redirect ) which bypasses the locale detection and loads the US, American English edition.

Ah, then you don't have the Google Toolbar, which is bit of software that is installed separately with buttons for various Google-affiliated widgets (GAdgets?). You have Firefox's search box, which is a completely different beast.

The search settings are stored in the "searchplugins" folder in your Firefox installation folder (e.g. \Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins). This is a hypothesis, as I have no way to test it here, but you could try editing google.xml (called google.src in FF1). The line that specifies the search URL is <SearchForm>http://www.google.com/firefox</SearchForm>; try changing it to <SearchForm>http://www.google.com/ncr</SearchForm>, saving, and quitting and restarting Firefox and see if that forces the issue.

Wirelessly posted (Blackberry8700c: BlackBerry8310/4.5.0.69 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/120)

This is a constant challenge since many local users don't know that google.(Country code) is available, so they use that when instead their local site would give better results. Google.com/ncr is by far the easiest way to solve this issue.
The ad trageting is wholly intentional since commercial offers are inherently local (or country-based) and advertisers get angry if their ads are shown to those out of country who have no likelihood of making commercial transactions there.

Yes, of course the country-based selection of explicit advertisements (typically displayed in a column on the right) makes plenty of sense. It's the way that Google messes with the weighting of search results that probably would surprise most users if they looked carefully - eg my example of bringing Best Buy up the list when you put in "headphones" and you are in the US. I don't know whether this counts as an "advertisement" in the Google commercial model.