Country-specific google search portal pages

[SumGuy]

Two questions:

1) I'm in Canada. I know for many years that if I pointed my browser to www,google,com that it would be redirected to google,ca. I had always thought that if I wanted to REALLY bring up the google,com search page that there was a way to do it. I was looking into this today, and can't seem to find a way. Is there a way? (ps: I can bring up the google search page for many different countries, but not google,com).


2) When viewing a google search result, it used to be that if I clicked on a non-sponsored result, that the URL (as printed on the screen) was the actual URL that I'd be directed to. Starting about 1 or 2 weeks ago, I'm noticing that the behavior has changed and I'm now being re-directed through google to the desired URL search result. Again, I've never seen this before for non-sponsored results. Is this happening only for google,ca search results?

[Doc]

SumGuy-

I did a little searching, and like I'm sure you already saw, it's easy to change your language preference, but not so easy to change your country preference. I did find this:
Why doesn't google honour my browser's culture - Web Search Help which seems to deal with a similar problem. Seems as though some folks have found a way around it by clearing their cookies, then saving the preferred google search page as their home page. Good luck.

EDIT: You might also find more information amongst the many similar complaints listed here, SumGuy: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&a..._nhi=&safe=off

[SumGuy]

When I bring up the google search page google,ca, I guess I really never noticed the "Go to Google,com" link under the search bar. I clicked it, and yes, now I can get to what looks like exactly the same search page, except my browser address bar now has "google,com" instead of google,ca. But another change I've noticed is that now I can actually type "google,com" in my address bar and I will actually go to google,com and not be redirected to google,ca.


But what's more important is that google seems to have changed the format of all their search results. All the URL's are now re-directs back to google - not just for the sponsored links.

[weegillis]

There was some mention of Google working under the hood a while back. They must be implementing the changes, now. You should be able to read more about this in Webmaster blog.

[Doc]

When I bring up the google search page google,ca, I guess I really never noticed the "Go to Google,com" link under the search bar. I clicked it, and yes, now I can get to what looks like exactly the same search page, except my browser address bar now has "google,com" instead of google,ca. But another change I've noticed is that now I can actually type "google,com" in my address bar and I will actually go to google,com and not be redirected to google,ca.


But what's more important is that google seems to have changed the format of all their search results. All the URL's are now re-directs back to google - not just for the sponsored links.

It's also possible that having finally found your way there, and having received the relevant cookie, you can now get there without being rerouted to google.ca.

[Peter]

I am in the UK, if i go to google.com, i get redirected to google.co.uk however in the links at the bottom it has a link to go to google.com, and once i am on google.com i have a choice of going to google UK.

Also for adwords theres a handy way of bypassing the regional viewing. Do a search on the Google of your choice, and at the end add &gl=us and refresh the page, replacing US with whatever region of ads you want to see. I find this handy to view ads as a native would see them.