Everything turns to French, I am fed up!

[Kari]

And that's why I can not understand why OP can't get it working. He's basically in same situation than me. It can not be that French Google has a different language policy, can't it?

 

[whs]

He must be missing one little step. I don't think it would behave differently in France.

 

[Kari]

I really wanted to dig deeper in this matter. Coming from a bilingual family in bilingual country, I just logged in to my Swedish and Finnish accounts once more, to test different scenarios in both of my domestic languages.

Basic settings:

Swedish account computer location set to Sweden, keyboard layout Swedish, Google interface and search language set to Swedish, Google location set to Stocholm (Sweden).

Finnish account computer location set to Finland, keyboard layout Finnish, Google interface and search language set to Finnish, Google location set to Helsinki (Finland).

Google.com on both accounts redirects to google.de, naturally. Search results show Swedish respective Finnish results, among them both English and German. Finnish search gave English pages, among them a few German, but the reason is logical: I wanted to use the same search term "Netgear Router" as before, and as known as the word in Finland among PC users is, it is not a Finnish word. Because it is also a Swedish word, Swedish results were first Swedish, and from page 2 also English and German.

Google sponsored search results (right pane) pointed to German pages in both above mentioned cases.

Testing localisized Google pages gave the results what I was expecting. Logged in to my Swedish account, using google.se instead of google.com didn't redirect to google.de. All search results in Swedish, also the ads and sponsored links pointing to Swedish pages.

The same with google.fi on Finnish account, although search results were in English (reason as told above). Important here is to notice it didn't give German results although the physical location of this computer is Germany. Ads and sponsored links to the Finnish pages.

Screenshots, first Finnish



And Swedish:



Conclusion:

I think the OP should do this:

• Use a native English Google address intead of Google.com or Google.fr. My suggestion is to use google.co.uk, the British Google (google.com can not be classified as native English Google, as it redirects to a local google site according to the real physical location of the computer)
• Set computer location to United Kingdom
• Set Google interface and search languages to English, disabling French
• Set Google location to London

It really should work, done like this.

Kari

 

[unifex]

Kari,

This is a cookie issue. My computers (I am currently in Germany) are all in English (original English-language OS installed), the "location" is set to the US, but there is nothing I can do about the German IP address. As a result, in order to get Google in English I either need to go specifically to the UK site google.co.uk - but then I will get mostly UK-related search results, or to google.com/ncr to get to the US site. On the other hand my search box defaults to google.de and I have not found an easy way to change that. Once there, I can indeed set the interface and search language to English, but this is done by means of a cookie. As long as the cookie is there it works fine, but if I use, say, Ccleaner and forget to uncheck all firefox-related entries, then it erases the cookie and I have to set those settings all over again.

The ads of course are always in German - but I don't care much about that.

 

[Kari]

@Unifex

What you say makes sence. That said, that's not the full truth. I can demonstrate complete different behaviour with one browser, one session. Easily.

Check this. Both samples using google.de, Google location set to Leipzig:

Google.de search and interface language in English (notice the language tag in address bar). Sponsored links and ads in English, search results in English. A completely English search "experience":



Without closing the browser, emtying the cache or deleting cookies, an instant settings change in Google, setting interface and search language to German, changing computer location from United Kingdom to Germany. German search results, German ads and sponsored links:


(Only local hits on my computer shown in English due to installed English version of Google Desktop Search)

Cookie, who cares? Any one of you can tell me what you want, but at least my Google works exactly as I want it to work. You can try to prove I'm wrong, I just know and have shown I'm not. Finnish Google searches Finland, showing Finnish sponsored links, Swedish does it in Swedish, German in German and English in English. I don't have to delete cookies, reset or restart browser, nothing. Just change Google settings and computer location.

This works so well that for instance Google Ads presented on different pages are shown in respective language, from respective countries.

Kari

 

[unifex]

Kari, this is Google's own description of how the setting of preferences work.

It's clear that you can set your settings the way you like and obtain results. The question is, can you "save" this behavior, so that you don't have to set your settings every time you start your browser.

 

[yowanvista]

I had similar issue with Google truning to French everytime until i blocked the french cookie

 

[Kari]

I can only tell that for me, a Finn living in Germany, using computer (including Google) mostly in Finnish, English and Swedish, it works as I want it to work. Settings are saved and remembered by every browser I have tested and used.

 

[wilywombat]

Perhaps you have an LSO cookie installed? These can be difficult to remove. If you use Firefox, download the "Better Privacy" add-on:- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623/
More on "Flash / Super cookies" here:- Flash Cookies: The Silent Privacy Killer | I'm A Super.com