Why defualt to US search for .co.uk

Only google

[Dubya_J]

Why is Google the only search engine in the world that has its regional defualt search settings set to look through the global index, rather than pages from the UK.

Anyone got any ideas. I often wonder how many people select, or even know that they can select this option when they are at Google.co.uk

Come on GG. There are other countries.

[epfantasia]

I am likewise surprised that google.com does not automatically launch the UK locale, as is the case from most of Europe, but only with explicitly requesting google.co.uk.

Presume this is very easy to do with their geo-targeting already in place with Adwords.

[bateman_ap]

I like it just the way it is from the UK to be honest. Very rarely use country specific searches in google and would hate my default to give a 'crippled' search.

Usually just stick UK on the end of my search to find uk sites, seems to work OK!

[rfgdxm1]

>I like it just the way it is from the UK to be honest. Very rarely use country specific searches in google and would hate my default to give a 'crippled' search.

This is what I was thinking. For informational type searches that is what most people do. Why would someone in the UK want as a default UK-only pages for a search about the Punic Wars?

[jomaxx]

I'm surprised that you (apparently) can't set this option in the preferences, but as a non-US searcher I agree that defaulting to a global search is much better.

>> Come on GG. There are other countries.
I have no idea what this means. There's nothing chauvinistic in defaulting to a global search.

[Dubya_J]

Fair enough rfgdxm1, if I want facts, then geography is not so much of an issue most of the time, as the facts are the facts whereever they come from.

But if I want a locksmith, train timetables, to book a flight, legal or accounting advice (English language and UK law are 2 very different things) or anything which requires regional fulfillment to be effective, then its not the case.

And as for no Chauvenism or Bias, I disagree. Global search is inherently US biased as searches are done in English, of which US based content in English is vastly disporportionate in size to UK content in English, and takes advantage of the economy of scale afforded by the sheer amount of content and the size of the online population in its influence of the Algorithm.

OK...so if I want it that badly , I'll qualify my search a little more, but lets face it, were the savier breed of web user here, and don't constitute the online majority.

And if I did need to qualify it further, its because of the saturation of US content. Hence the less geographically specific you are, the more it is US biased.

There little thats Global, about an english language defualt search. (hence "there are other countries" in global)

If you search in French or German, it wouldn't matter whether you had global search enabled, as your unlikely to find a disproportionately large amount of French language content published outside of the region.