controlling Google

[Pejic]

Thanks Rambler, but I have ben unable to find anywhere where I can change my location to anywhere but somewhere else in Bulgaria. Their help suggests I will see "Location" at the left hand side of the "preferences" page, but I do not see "Location" anywhere.

[LizzieW]

I know that google have been 'fiddling' with this, and now, for every single google search you make, you need to go through the palaver of going to advanced search and then selecting your location if you want results from a specific country. The default appears to be the USA. 

  I was blaming it on a Firefox update, didn't think about it being Google 

Their help suggests I will see "Location" at the left hand side of the "preferences" page, but I do not see "Location" anywhere.

That option used to be on the left hand side of any Google page, but disappeared with the new layout, so they need to change their help suggestion. 

[mike175]

I rarely use Google these days, partly because of the problems described, and also because they seem to want to take over from Microsoft in world domination, and to build a database of everyone's online activities

Fortunately, Firefox and its add-ons allow you to disable many of the hidden Google applications, but I'm sure they will keep working out ways to circumvent them.

There are other search engines . . . just 'google' for them . . . 

[perth tiger]

which google site are you using?
try going to google uk and doing it from there

[Manchester Rambler]

I have ben unable to find anywhere where I can change my location to anywhere but somewhere else in Bulgaria.

I don't see an option to change my location at all!  Under "Search Settings", the second option I see top left is "Languages", which I changed to English.  (Maybe I have a different version?)

[Roger The Hat]

I don't know if this is helpful, but AltaVista (Yahoo) offers the option to  "Search only for pages written in one or more of the following languages:"
 
I haven't tried it, in case I can't read the option to return to English......!
 

'Hat.

[Ruskie]

I know that google have been 'fiddling' with this, and now, for every single google search you make, you need to go through the palaver of going to advanced search and then selecting your location if you want results from a specific country. The default appears to be the USA. 

  I was blaming it on a Firefox update, didn't think about it being Google 

Their help suggests I will see "Location" at the left hand side of the "preferences" page, but I do not see "Location" anywhere.

That option used to be on the left hand side of any Google page, but disappeared with the new layout, so they need to change their help suggestion. 

"Advanced Search" is now at the bottom of the page. From here you need to select country from the pull down menu after every google search. If anyone knows a way around this I would be very grateful if they could share it with me. I use google an awful lot so this process is very tiresome.

You're right Mike - they are trying to take over our world - pretty disturbing.

[GrahamSimons]

Have a look here http://www.thesearchenginelist.com/ for search engines.

For some searches a metasearch using something like www.dogpile.com is helpful.

Google's policy of collecting data on its users does have one benefit: by learning what sort of things the user is searching for, the search engine can try to deliver the results you want. That's why different users get different results for the same search.

[mike175]

... by learning what sort of things the user is searching for, the search engine can try to deliver the results you want ...

Yeah . . . I suppose that's why, when I do a search for size 12 shoes, Amazon (or it may have been ebay) suggests that I might also be interested in some size 9 . . . 

. . . and it's possibly why, after I bought a new camera, I was bombarded with emails suggesting others I might also like to purchase . . . 

... try going to google uk and doing it from there ...

I occasionally use google UK but usually get bounced over to the US site for the results. I think they're trying to be too clever . . . and failing miserably as far as I'm concerned