Google's a great search engine (so good I sometimes worry about seeing the world only through Google's eyes :-) but one thing always annoys me: it displays search results in the local language. This is great for the locals but not for travelers. In Switzerland google.com redirects me to a German google.ch, even though I'm in a French-speaking part of the country. In Italy, I get google.it. Mamamia, how to make it stick with English?!
You'd think Google would have a setting for your preferred language but if they do I haven't found it. Fortunately there are a number of workarounds:
- Use this link for your searches: http://www.google.com/intl/en/
- Install this firefox addon (plugin)
- Try this if you suspect your search preferences aren't sticking (doesn't work for me: I have English set and still get foreign results)
In my opinion there's a better workaround, at least for the moment. Use https://www.google.com/ instead of http://www.google.com/. Leveraging a secure connection bypasses local language switching and sticks to English.
Going the https route has another advantage of course: it's much harder for a malicious person to sniff what you're searching for with Google (and grab your session cookies while they're at it). A nice bonus given that travelers can't always trust the connections they're using.
If you're on Firefox, a number of people have written search engine providers for secure google. The one I wrote also implements secure type ahead suggestions.
So now you can say arrividerci to those Italian search results! :-)