A useful feature of google search is ncr, no country redirect, which prevents geolocation redirection to the localized home page. Useful if you travel a lot, only want results in English if you live in a non-English speaking country, and so on.<p>The url used to be<p>https://www.google.com/ncr<p>Unfortunately this seems to have stopped working recently (clear cookies and caches first for anyone using this to see). After not a little search effort as it's either an unannounced change (or a bug?), you now need:<p>http://www.google.com/?gfe_rd=cr&gws_rd=cr<p>Hope this helps anyone relying on ncr.
It used to be like this: Visit <i><a href="https://www.google.com/ncr" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/ncr</a> </i> once, and on further requests, <i><a href="https://www.google.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/</a> </i> or <i><a href="https://www.google.com/?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/?hl=en</a> </i> wouldn't redirect to <i>google.de</i> any more. Unfortunately, visiting <i><a href="https://www.google.com/?gfe_rd=cr&gws_rd=cr" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/?gfe_rd=cr&gws_rd=cr</a> </i> doesn't appear to have this effect. Still a good workaround, so thanks for sharing!<p>I wonder if this might have anything to do with that EU <i>right to be forgotten</i> thing. The EU would like Google to remove search results from <i>google.com</i>, which is obviously very undesirable for Google, so maybe they try to appease the EU by making <i>google.com</i> harder to access for Europeans? Maybe the <i>Use Google.com</i> link will be removed soon?
For me it works with just this:<p><a href="http://www.google.com/?gws_rd=cr" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/?gws_rd=cr</a><p>In Firefox you can assign a keyword to a bookmark. So when you bookmark this and assign keyword "g" then you can visit google.com by simply typing "g". Very convinient.
I use Google Search rarely but <a href="https://www.google.com/ncr" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/ncr</a> is still in my muscle memory.
Nowadays I just ddg.gg and in the rare case I'm not satisfied with the results I add g! in the search bar.
The g! seems to give me the same results as <a href="https://www.google.com/ncr" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/ncr</a>. (I like to consider this a feature and not a bug.)<p>To give you some perspective: I live in Germany but prefer to read programming or scientific topics in English. My English is not so good but the amount and quality of English content counterbalances this by large. When using Google from Germany (google.de or google.com, doesn't matter what) looking for English search terms gives me subpar search results.<p>There is another reason for avoiding local Google search (google .com or google.de without ncr). From about October to mid December whenever I'm was not logged into Google I could only search when I OKed a popup to accept Google's terms. There was only an OK button so I could only search if I explicitly accepted their terms or logged in (I did neither). ncr avoided this problem. They stopped doing this but still nag with a big banner to accept their terms.<p>Just to be clear: I'm not complaining. I just think that most HN readers are not aware of this and some might prossible be interested to know how using Google another country feels like.<p>The only use case I have for Google search is localized search. For example: Yesterday I wanted to look up the ensemble of a local theater. There is nothing that can beat Google in this regard.
I've always used <a href="https://encrypted.google.com/" rel="nofollow">https://encrypted.google.com/</a>, which works the same way (I think?) The URL is from before google even had https.
It's too bad Google ignores the browser's language preferences, this wouldn't be needed if they weren't so broken wrt Accept-Language.
What really gets on my nerves is that I can't configure it to use google.com when I search from the omnibox, I don't even know from where is it getting my current country, I guess it's IP geolocation.
I use this url to use google.com <a href="https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&ned=us&tab=nw&gws_rd=ssl,cr" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&ned=us&tab=nw&gws_rd=ssl,...</a>
they optimize for locals, while killing usability for foreigners and travellers. try using google in spain - even the results are worthless if you're not a spaniard. local search results get prominence, which is hilarious when searching tech terms.