Searching another country’s Google

[Samuel D]

Step by step, Google is making it harder for me to search in the way I want:

• they removed the very useful Discussions filter maybe three years ago
• they removed the show-results-in-[language] filter more recently
• they continuously swap the locations of the Images / Shopping / etc., filters to try to get you to click on the wrong one (and then what, start using it regularly? Preposterous logic)
• Shopping is barely worth using anymore because the results are so limited and polluted by sponsors
• pages that don’t meet the latest, worthless trends in SEO are increasingly penalised, leading to recently updated and fashionable pages taking strong precedence over good ones. If you ever get any of these fascinating pages in a Google Search result, I’d love to hear how you tricked Google!

In short, the sort of self-serving, anti-consumer behaviour that monopolies display…

But my latest frustration is trying to get Google to show search results for another country. Perhaps I want to search Google Germany. How can I do that now and get sensible results? Simply searching from google.de gives me mostly French and English results.

[pcolbeck]

Google are many things but a monopoly they aren't.

You can use Bing or anyone of a host of others:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines

What they are is the best (for values of best that apply to the expectations of most people) at what they do hence why they are the most popular.
 

[pcolbeck]

To answer your question though.

Go to google.co.uk or google.com and at the bottom right of the screen is the "settings" option. Click this and you can change your region.

You might have to scroll down to see this dependant on your device.

[Cudzoziemiec]

...
In short, the sort of self-serving, anti-consumer behaviour that monopolies display…

Anti-consumer but pro-consumerist. Interesting to make the distinction.  But that doesn't necessarily belong in this thread.

[Samuel D]

Go to google.co.uk or google.com and at the bottom right of the screen is the "settings" option. Click this and you can change your region.

Doesn’t work (makes little or no difference to search results). I wish it was that simple.

[Ben T]

Try changing the locale on your actual computer/browser?

[geraldc]

"Check and update your location
Do a search on Google.
Scroll to the bottom of the search results page. You'll see your location.
To update your location, tap Use precise location.
If you're asked to share your device's location with Google, tap Allow."

Isn't it more language than location, when I search in Chinese it only brings up Chinese language results, surely German language searches would bring up only German results.

[SoreTween]

Timely. Today while sitting in Italy I went to Google.co.uk to search for stuff to buy in the UK even specifying uk in the search terms. I got results in German listing shops in Germany, presumably thats where the company exit point is. Helpful to someone I'm sure but not to me.

Awaits answer that a) works and b) doesn't require a login. Or a half decent uk shopping search link.

[Samuel D]

Ben T and geraldc’s suggestions don’t work either, for the record.

No doubt geraldc is right that if you search for German words, Google will return German results (but have you noticed how often Google no longer searches for what you typed but what it thinks you wanted to type? And/or it returns results that don’t strictly match your query, with its “Missing: term1 term2” caveat. Half my search terms are in quotation marks these days).

But German language terms don’t apply when you’re searching for product names or numbers, which is often the reason I’m searching in Germany or elsewhere.

Since 2012 or so, practically all the software I use has got more opaque in how it functions, more intrusive on my privacy, murkier about where my data is stored, and less useful. Ebay is another one: it’s started giving me machine-translated French titles for UK eBay listings. Can you think of anything dafter? And you can’t turn this broken feature off!

[pcolbeck]

Try using Google Ad Preview Tool

https://adwords.google.com/anon/AdPreview

This is teh anonymous version it lets you set the location and language and seems to work when I set it to Berlin and German.

[Samuel D]

That does work in a limited fashion (in that you can’t see beyond the first page of results or click on any of them). Could be useful, because I can pull up the results by doing a normal Google search with the terms I find there in quotation marks. Thanks.

[Ham]

One very quick and easy way is to add the site search modifer based on the region you are looking for  eg site:.de will return german sites.  Obviously it doesn't include any local sites on .com domains, but it is surprisingly effective.

[Ham]

A second way is to use google translate to translate "Search" into the language you are looking for, then search for that, using the country domain modifier if you want. That will give you a local search engine, where you can fill your boots. Of course, if you want you can then use Google translate to present the results in your language. eg deutsche suche site:.de gives you a range of german search engines. Web suchen would give you some more.

[Feanor]

IME, google uses IP geolocation to redirect you to the local google site.

Right now, all my googling is hitting google.com.na.
In JoBurg, it was using a za site.

So perhaps a proxy to pop out in the geographic location you need might work.

I'm not sure what TLD you'd get from low earth orbit, tho.

[PeterM]

But my latest frustration is trying to get Google to show search results for another country. Perhaps I want to search Google Germany. How can I do that now and get sensible results?

Google Advanced Search allows you to filter by country and language.  Google has now hidden it, of course.  Try googling "Google Advanced Search."  Or go to https://www.google.com/advanced_search

[Cudzoziemiec]

IME, google uses IP geolocation to redirect you to the local google site.

Right now, all my googling is hitting google.com.na.
In JoBurg, it was using a za site.

So perhaps a proxy to pop out in the geographic location you need might work.

I'm not sure what TLD you'd get from low earth orbit, tho.

.takeoffandnukeit 

[mattc]

But my latest frustration is trying to get Google to show search results for another country. Perhaps I want to search Google Germany. How can I do that now and get sensible results?

Google Advanced Search allows you to filter by country and language.  Google has now hidden it, of course.  Try googling "Google Advanced Search."  Or go to https://www.google.com/advanced_search

that's very useful, thanks - I thought it had gone for good (or I was just being dumb not finding it).

(but have you noticed how often Google no longer searches for what you typed but what it thinks you wanted to type? And/or it returns results that don’t strictly match your query, with its “Missing: term1 term2” caveat. Half my search terms are in quotation marks these days).

Yup. It's starting to get annoying.