Google’s Chrome browser generally defaults to determining your location using your IP address and customising its search domain using that information (so Australians usually see results via .com.au). If you want your searches directed through a different Google domain, you can change that using a simple settings edit.
Potential reasons for wanting to change the browser’s behaviour might be if you prefer using the default .com interface (which generally gets new features added faster), or if you’re overseas but want results oriented to your home country or language. Either way, as Google Operating System points out, you can alter it by opening the User Profile directory in chrome, editing the Local State file, and changing two variables to include the country code you want.
Hit Google Operating System’s post for more detail. That fix is Chrome-specific. If you want to change the default search engine in other browsers, check out our guides to how to change the default search provider and how to get Australian search results in Firefox.
Change Google’s Search Domain in Google Chrome [Google Operating System]
Jono
Monday, August 15, 2011 at 2:11 PMOr you can just add “/ncr” to the URL of the google site you want and it’ll keep you there – eg
http://www.google.co.uk/ncr
NCR stands for No Country Redirect.
Senectus
Monday, August 15, 2011 at 2:16 PMalso I found that if you force SSL encrypted searches it _always_ uses the american search engines… you get little to no local results.
Jason
Monday, August 15, 2011 at 3:22 PMNow the real trick: how do you prevent the standard lifehacker.com from automatically diverting to http://www.lifehacker.com.au? (I’m an American living in AUS, so would like to see every US story).
Grayda
Monday, August 15, 2011 at 3:49 PMTry http://us.lifehacker.com . There’s a little button in the top-right that says “US”. Small, but good to know it’s there.
Rich
Monday, August 15, 2011 at 7:53 PMnope http://us.lifehacker.com nor the US button work for me. I am forever held hostage to http://www.lifehacker.com.au
Angus Kidman
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 6:11 AMHi Rich,Sorry about that. The domain redirection is controlled in the US, not directly by us, and we point out when there are issues but because of the time difference and the nature of DNS it sometimes takes a while to get them resolved. You’ll often find that z.lifehacker.com will work to get you to the US site without redirection if there are problems with the us.lifehacker.com address.
Rich
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 8:41 PMHey Angus. z.lifehacker redirects me back to AU aswell :(
Jason
Thursday, August 18, 2011 at 5:21 PMOkay – I’ve got a workaround that work 100% of the time. It’s a pain in the arse, but it works…
1. search for Lifehacker on Google
2. click the cached version of lifehacker.com (I bookmark this link for future access)
3. click on an article from the cached version of lifehacker.com
4. click the big green Lifehacker emblem/link at the top and it will ALWAYS take you to http://blog.lifehacker.com/.
Enjoy.
James
Monday, August 15, 2011 at 8:58 PMToo bad US lifehacker looks really bad… :D
Mike
Monday, August 15, 2011 at 3:49 PMA simpler option might be for Chrome to obey some of the language settings in its dialog boxes.
Apparently the way to avoid having Chrome display Google UI in a foreign language counter to those settings is to explicitly ADD that language to your browser’s language list down at the bottom. I wish I was making that up.
Mike
Monday, August 15, 2011 at 3:49 PMI meant to say “counter to the IP-based language foisted on you”