I'm currently in based in Medellin, Colombia. This happens to me about 10% of the time, randomly, where the results will be in Spanish. What's more annoying is that my currency selection doesn't persist, and always snaps back to COP when I'm searching flights, etc.
Tell HN: Google ignores English searches and forces localized results
41–50 of 91 posts
Re: Tell HN: Google ignores English searches and forces localized results
#42Try https://kagi.com/
I would never pay for search. The obvious solution here to browse behind Tor or a VPN, or to physically move to an English speaking country if you want to live in a 100% English environment.
> I would never pay for search.
I’m curious, why not? The amount of time and frustration saved seems insane, which seems to be a net positive, unless you can’t afford it of course (which is a good argument, but I’m not seeing any in your comment).
Re: Tell HN: Google ignores English searches and forces localized results
#43I have the opposite problem with YouTube, where they insist on dubbing everything when in just want subtitles.
The result is an Italian cooking demo where the chef exclaims “MULTA BENE!” and the AI voice deadpans “it is very good.”
I’m sure it’s even more annoying when you’re bilingual and can’t turn it off.
Re: Tell HN: Google ignores English searches and forces localized results
#44Forcing AI down our throats. Not only Google search, same thing with YT. Make no mistake, there's enough bilingual people employed by Google across US for them to know perfectly well how annoying this is.
This isn't a coincidence. I'd bet this is so they can inflate their adoption numbers to justify further involvement in the AI race to their shareholders.
Which, to me, is a very string sign that we're in a massive "solution looking for a problem" bubble. We've been there before. We know how it ends.
Re: Tell HN: Google ignores English searches and forces localized results
#45Google search quality has declined significantly over the years. For many of my searches now, I can ask an LLM and get better results faster - especially for technical questions where I just need a direct answer.
Though I suspect this won't last once LLMs start inserting ads and promoted content into responses.
Re: Tell HN: Google ignores English searches and forces localized results
#46Please look into duckduckgo or other search providers if possible / if you can and your workflow allows it
Other people might have given more credible information about how to fix it but I am on duckduckgo for 2 years now and I seriously love it and It doesn't have any of these issues.
If your workflow allows so, definitely give duckduckgo (Or other private search engines like brave,startpage,ecosia etc.) a try as well.
Re: Tell HN: Google ignores English searches and forces localized results
#47I noticed that Reddit behavior recently, but not the other things. I searched for " Nederland" hoping to find a Dutch source for something I can't get in Ireland, and got a Reddit hit in Dutch that talked about paying €30 for it online with a response talking (also in Dutch) about the thing being $14 at Wal-Mart and Kroger-- neither of which exists in NL. I then noticed the text at the top of the page saying that the…
To be clear, this is Reddit auto-translating and poisoning their own search results, and it's the most frustrating thing. Post AI and post Google enshittification, we all ended up appending "reddit" to the end of our searches to filter out all the blogspam and get some real human opinions on queries, so Reddit decides to cash in and make sure they receive the maximum amount of that traffic by making it available in every language under the sun, poisoning their own well deliberately. It's shit turtles all the way down!
Re: Tell HN: Google ignores English searches and forces localized results
#48Try https://kagi.com/
I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m curious enough to try it now. Thanks.
Re: Tell HN: Google ignores English searches and forces localized results
#49>Reddit results are often force-translated instead of linking to the original English content. It's very annoying. Put this in a search query to filter them out: -inurl:?tl=
I built a Firefox extension to inject this sort of thing automatically, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to shill it here. It's not like I'm getting paid for it...
Re: Tell HN: Google ignores English searches and forces localized results
#50It happens to me all the time too, it's fucking annoying as fucking fuck, it doesn't seem to be a solution
Drives me crazy as I travel a lot. Even if I‘m logged into Google and it’s been tracking me for years and it‘s still targeting me with obviously personalized ads but it will assume I’ve suddenly acquired temporary proficiency in French, German, Italian, Spanish, etc stubbornly ignoring the language I’ve used for my query or the only language I’ve ever - in all my interactions with Google over years - ever used. What the fuck would be so hard to just NOT use braindead geolocation (which doesn’t even work in countries like Switzerland) when you know for certain who I am. You track all this information about me and use it to generate ad revenue but refuse to use my language preference?