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WebWord Weblog Posting

Posting Date: March 05, 2003
 

Local Googles try to second-guess user preferences -- "He said he doesn't use it anymore. Somewhat shocked to hear this I asked why. He said Google now has a Hungarian version - my father is in Budapest - and even when he goes to www.google.com (as opposed to, say, www.google.hu) the search engine defaults to Hungarian sites which bothers him tremendously as most of his searches are aimed at English language content mostly based in the US or the UK. So he stopped using it." (WebWord Comment: Google and Branding.)

 

  

Reader Comments...
 

Here in NZ it also redirects from google.com to google.co.nz - which on occassions I have found annoying. However, Google doesn't redirect if you visit any other domain including google.co.uk or google.com.au - so perhaps it's just the .com one to avoid!

Posted by: Zef on March 6, 2003 05:39 PM


 

That's an interesting observation. There is one problem though, there is no such thing as google.co.us so if you want to focus on the US you have to go to google.com but then that redirects. Hmmmm...

I've forwarded the note to someone who hopefully has passed it on to the relevant people at Google.

Posted by: eszter on March 6, 2003 06:46 PM


 

I've found that the best way to prevent google from doing the thinking for me is to block its cookies. A search engine doesn't need my personal information to give me great results.

Google is the only site in my "restricted site zone". Doing this hasn't affected its search accuracy.


Posted by: on March 8, 2003 04:26 AM


 

Here in Norway it often diverts to the google.at Austrian site - getting the location completely wrong and searching German language websites. This is one side of google that is completely unintuitive.

I worked around it by bookmarking the advanced search page at google.com

Posted by: Timo on March 10, 2003 05:19 AM


 

Why didn't you just learn German?

Posted by: on March 11, 2003 06:17 PM


 

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