Tell HN: Google ignores English searches and forces localized results

Google Search change in a way that I can’t seem to opt out of.

I’m based in a non-English-speaking country, but I regularly search in English, especially for technical topics.

My Google account, my laptop, my phone, my interface language, and preferences are all set to English; only my physical location and payment methods are local.

What happens is that Google increasingly returns localized results in my native language and aggressively applies automatic translation.

Some concrete behaviors I’m seeing:

- Queries written in English still prioritize pages in Portuguese, even when equivalent English sources exist.

- Reddit results are often force-translated instead of linking to the original English content.

- “AI mode” responses are always in Portuguese, even when the prompt is clearly in English, with no visible way to force output language.

- The UI offers a choice between “Portuguese” and “All web,” but selecting “All web” doesn’t reliably return English results nor disable translation.

- In practice, explicit query language seems to be overridden by inferred user preferences (location / account language).

I’m curious whether others are seeing the same behavior, and whether there’s any way to restore search to become 100% useful again; or what are you using since this really limits search results, especially for technical things.

?hl=en

I have the same problem and my "solution" is mediocre, but kind of works: use a VPN. I used to set it to the UK, but since the recent developments I've been experimenting with other English-speaking countries. My native language is Spanish, but I live in Japan, and it's odd because I never want Japanese (language) results, but I am fine with Spanish results.

Some times I need to switch to Spain, or Japan, or just disable it due to geo blocking. I use Mullvad, which makes this easier, but TBH the main practical use of my VPN is what you mention, I never want results in Japanese and Google is very bad at getting the hint.

The worst one I keep noticing is MDN, I know there's an article in perfectly fine English but why am I always redirected to the local language one? That's not even location-dependent.

It doesn't really work when we're dealing with content like reddit and the new "AI mode"

It should work across all Google products