Google.com gives Google.es results

[glenv]

I noticed my adwords campaigns were in the toilet today so I did a quick search on google.com for a common keyword I use and when I type in Google.com I get Google.es

Anyone know what's going on?

[tedster]

Do you mean that the google.com home page redirects to the google.es home page? Or do searches from a query done on google.com display as results coming from google.es?

[glenv]

I type the address google.com into the address bar and I get google.es using Internet Explorer. I am on the east coast.

[glenv]

Just tried it in Firefox as well and get the same results. That eliminates any hijacking since I rarely use Firefox.

[tedster]

This may be an automatic redirect, based on your ISP. On a trip to London I was in a hotel that used a German-based ISP for their web connections. Whenever I typed in google.com from my hotel room, I was sent to google.de

[Receptional Andy]

Google did that for the majority of regional IPs (with a corresponding regional version) the last time I looked. I find it a somewhat odd mix of geo-redirection and geo-cloaking search engines use. Google even provide a (cookie-based) option to turn off the redirect in the bottom right corner of the homepage.

[edited by: Receptional_Andy at 10:08 pm (utc) on May 2, 2008]

[glenv]

Uhhh, why on earth would they be doing it to me? I am in my home office, Central New York State. Never had this trouble before. Sorry, I don't see your reasoning. Fact is somehting t'aint right.

[glenv]

Ok, I read your post again. There was a link in the lower corner of google that said Google in English. It works. Why would this have happened out of the blue?

[Receptional Andy]

Why would this have happened out of the blue?

The overall behaviour isn't new. A common reason would be that either your IP address changed, or Google's database of IP locations did. There are other potential causes, of course. I've never looked specifically at google.es.

Somewhat off-topic, but I always found it interesting that Google offers (for instance) people in the UK the option of pages hosted in the UK, whereas for many European countries you get both a hosting/language choice. So Google Espanol offers both pages in Spanish and pages hosted in Spain.