Google search abroad - VERY ANNOYING geotargetting

[aleksl]

I feel the pain of webmasters who are not located in USA or major metropolitan areas. Google search, with its geo-targetting is really REALLY annoying.

US Virgin islands. Google defaults to Google Puerto Rico, in spanish?.... what the....? I've set it up finally to display in english, but it keeps falling back to google.com.pr, Google Maps have disappeared and instead you see "Translate" and "Scholar". Scholar?...I am desperately looking for google maps, click "more links" - not there, nothing, it is gone.

Is there a way to stop this ridiculous geotargetting behavior?

[tedster]

Even people in the UK have similar complaints. The last time I visited London, the hotel's internet provider was using a German IP and I was trying to get US information. I never did get that sorted out.

The only thing I can think of is browse through a proxy server based on the US mainland.

[aleksl]

Well, but it should be semi-TRIVIAL.

Since G likes geotargetting so much, I have an advice to G engineers: try loading google site in spanish, or some other language you don't speak. assume you don't know a word "english" in that language, and try to navigate google's UI to get it to display English. I got an answer - it is nearly impossible, you'll probably end up loading Babelfish first, etc....if you know what you are doing. Other users will be flat out at loss. (maybe a picture of a flag should be displayed next to "language" selection?)

A UI should reflect an ability, if a user chose so, to force a language OVER dumb geo-targetting. If I specifically said "english" for this computer, just give me a cookie. It may, however, screw up places like internet cafes, well...you can then look at primary language, if it says "en" and I specifically told "english" then choose en over IP geotargetting, or something similar. G should be able to figure this one out instead of falling back at incorrect language via IP.

[artek]

It is not only annoying abroad. I noticed that in US geotargetting is messing up not only Google search results, but also AdSense ads. Every time I check domains like "professionlosangeles" or "professionchicago", the Adsense displays irrelevant ads from the city I live in.

[Whitey]

... it's more than annoying in the verticals I observe. When you are looking for a relevant local result in a geo area, I find I have to force the search into the google tld for the location e.g. .za to get the most relevant results

Geo related search is a long way from perfect and i'm not sure that Google has worked out it's priorties correctly for certain categories of search. They seem to have problems with cross border activity and need to find a solution for this. It's a worry after more than 10 years as the leader in search technology.