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How do I keep the Google search results in English regardless of where I am searching from? Google is a genius at knowing what ads to show me and what particular language to show me the ads.

If I travel to Germany, I start getting Google results in German, which is OK because I can somewhat manage. However, when I go to Brazil I don't speak Portuguese and would like the results in English. Or is Google only allowing me to read the ads in a language I know?

I'm constantly having to click and reclick the bottom link "Google in English". I have tried every setting I can think of set to English in my Google preferences/settings, is there one I'm overlooking?

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  • yes my settings its United states and is saying is the default language but recently i see all pages in greek (i live in cyprus) ... this is getting weird !!!
    – user17157
    Feb 7, 2012 at 7:36
  • Have you tried this. It worked for me? Sep 14, 2013 at 21:06
  • See also here and here
    – cachius
    Apr 5 at 8:46

6 Answers 6

12

Okay I know this problem. Some very easy steps to do:

  1. Open your browsers settings
  2. On your start page preference just type in http://www.google.com/en
  3. Voilà (Thats OK in French)
7

I think the solution is to turn off the "Personal results" option in the Search Settings page. You reach it by navigating to:
Account Settings -> Search Settings -> Personal Results -> Do not use personal results

I discovered this because I noticed that if I was not sign in with my google account the results were shown in the language defined by the browser settings and when I sign in they show in Portuguese (Portugal) that is where I am located.

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4

Google appears to use a Geo-IP-based method of determining what language to serve content to you in, ignoring web standards and best practices of honoring your browser's language settings. I first noticed this when I first started using Tor, and I'd get really "weird" search results, etc., which I finally tracked down to being relevant to apparent "country of origin" of my Tor outbound router.

When you start a new browser session, you can go to google.com (which will promptly redirect you to google.[international TLD] and serve you content in whatever language Google thinks you want, to heck with what you have set your browser to prefer), and then choose English from the language options there; in my (admittedly out-dated now) experience, this would let me use Google (including all Google services) in English for the remainder of my browser session, but I would have to repeat this procedure for the next browser session.

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Try going to http://www.google.com/ncr

0

you need to go into your browser preferences and set english as you default preference. You can do this as such in firefox:

  • preferences
  • content tab
  • under language, press the choose button
  • Add english as you primary choice

If this does not work, then google may be using your location to server you content in a specific language. If that is the case, then I believe that google has an option to specify a default language given that you have a google account and are already logged in.

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  • The first point in your list varies depending on OS. Under Linux it's Edit -> Preferences, under windows it's Tools -> Options. I'm afraid I've no idea what it is on a mac.
    – Phil
    Apr 12, 2011 at 22:34
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Have you checked in Options > Under the Hood > Web Content section > Languages and spell-checker settings?

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