Google in Switzerland

September 14, 2005 9:14 PM

I am living in switzerland for the next two months and I want to access google.com listings. However, whenever I type it into my browser i get google.ch. Anyone know a way around this?
posted by tirebouchon to computers & internet (13 comments total)

When I go to Google.com from Australia, it directs me to Google.com.au. However, there is a "Go to Google.Com" link at the bottom-right of the page, which links to:

http://www.google.com/ncr

Try that.
posted by Jimbob at 9:18 PM on September 14, 2005

does http://www.google.us/ work? if not, what about changing your language settings in google preferences?
posted by clarahamster at 9:18 PM on September 14, 2005

In case you have any trouble with the The "Go to Google.Com" link, you should be sure you are accepting cookies.
posted by taz at 9:40 PM on September 14, 2005

Jimbob is right. AFAIK there's no way to prevent the redirection in the first place except IP spoofing, which may be a bit too much effort - I have the same thing with .nl and the search results are just about the same, although I have to go to google.com/ncr to access all the googletools.
posted by Skyanth at 10:53 PM on September 14, 2005

I'm living in Australia now and actually like the fact that it redirects to google.com.au. However, it still looks up the entire web by default. There is a radio button to confine searches to the .au domain, but I use that only on occasion.

So, I guess I'm just saying that it really is moot which one you use. On the Swiss site it gives the option to change the language of the main text to English, so you can do that if you need to as well.
posted by qwip at 11:12 PM on September 14, 2005

Go to http://www.google.com/intl/en/ instead. And mail google about how annoying their redirections are.
posted by fvw at 11:38 PM on September 14, 2005

Welcome to Switzerland! I'm here too.

Google has a cookie setting that tells it which site you want. By default www.google.com redirects you to www.google.ch, but if you click the "go to google.com" link in the lower right corner not only will it take you to google.com, but the setting should be sticky so that next time you load www.google.com it takes you to google.com, not google.ch.

The one thing I can't figure out how to do is to unset that preference, so www.google.com does redirect back to www.google.ch again. I'm sure flushing cookies would do that, but I can't find a less drastic solution. I'll try to find out.

BTW, google.ch returns different results than google.com. It's not just language, it's relevance. Compare a search for [zurich], for instance. Depending on what you're looking for you may find google.ch is more useful to you.
posted by Nelson at 12:09 AM on September 15, 2005

Oh yeah, Google's redirections, what a pain ...

Small hack for Firefox users: as fvw said, you can use http://www.google.com/intl/en/ for a standard search (e.g. from a bookmark toolbar or a home button) and a tiny search box in the top right corner will still keep going to a local search. No need to flush cookies in between.

Alternatively, two bookmarks (google.com and google.com/intl/en/) would do the same job.
posted by b. at 12:47 AM on September 15, 2005

Go visit this google page just once. It adds a cookie telling your browser to load up the .com in future. Works on Windows 2000 and WinXP, both Firefox and IE6x.
posted by ceri richard at 2:03 AM on September 15, 2005

Hello, I'm in Switzerland too! And I hated that stupid google.ch redirect, as I found out that the results ARE different. Subtle differences, but different nonetheless.

Clicking the "Go to google.com" link fixed that, tho.
posted by slater at 3:48 AM on September 15, 2005

i wish i was in switzerland!
posted by centrs at 9:02 PM on September 15, 2005

Results are different for local googles.
Very annoying redirection, if I wanted www.google.cl, I'd type www.google.cl.
posted by signal at 7:47 AM on September 27, 2005

some countries laws (such as germany and nazisim laws) make google tweak results.
posted by Izzmeister at 8:44 AM on January 9, 2006