Search google.com (in English)


English, please?
English, please?

Recently I wanted to google something, but all the German search results were of no use. So I wanted to try in English – but how? Usually I simply enter my search term in English and thus get English results, too. But this time I was looking for a quite “international” term such as “instant messenger”. Since I could not translate the term, because it was already in English, I thought: “Okay, I’ll just go to google.com then instead of google.de and type it in there.” – Well, far from it! From google.com, you will automatically be redirected to the Google domain of the country you’re just sitting in with your computer. In my case, that meant: right back to google.de – oh great!

Update (21st September 2013): The tip described below doesn’t work anymore by now. To search Google in English only, you now have to follow these steps:

  1. Search for the desired keyword as usual.
  2. On the results page, there is a cog wheel on the right; click it and choose “Languages”.
  3. Under “Which language should Google products use?”, choose English, then save.

Now you will get the desired English-language search results. The language setting will be retained for following searches, until you decide to reset them.

Changing the advanced search options (setting the preferred language to English, etc.) didn’t bring the desired success either. After some googling (!) I found the tip to have a try at the address http://www.google.com/ncr. For as soon as you append the little “/ncr” to the URL, you thereby tell Google that you don’t want to be redirected to the Google page of your own country. More than that, Google will even remember this decision for the future, so from now on you can always visit google.com without being redirected.

Link on the Google front page
Link on the Google front page

Yeah, well, and the greatest thing about the whole story is: After I had finally discovered all this, I noticed that, on the Google homepage, there had been a link right under my nose all the time, which leads exactly to the same destination …


4 responses to “Search google.com (in English)”

  1. Man sollte diese – für mich sehr – hilfreiche MEldung updaten, Google. de sieht schon wieder anders aus. Alles Javascript Gewürge.

  2. Hmm, Tatsache, der frühere Link ist weg. Allerdings erhalte ich nun auch über google.com/ncr ständig deutsche Ergebnisse, die sich selbst mit dem entsprechenden Suchfilter für die Sprache nicht rausfiltern lassen. Ätzend…

  3. Wie schon Ginchen sagte: Der Tipp funktioniert leider nicht (immer). Bei mir bringt er einfach trotzdem immer die deutschen Ergebnisse.

    Übrigens bin ich auf der Seite der Spracheinstellungen bei http://www.google.de nicht sehr weit gekommen: Deutsch lässt sich dort nicht ausklicken und ist fest vorgegeben. Nur weitere Sprachen lassen sich dazubuchen. Bei Begriffen, die im Deutschen wie im Englischen gleich heißen, sucht er immer die deutschen Seiten heraus. Also habe ich leider noch keine Lösung. Danke trotzdem!

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