How to Keep Google From Keeping Tabs on Your Location

This may be news for Americans who don't travel outside of the country—Google knows where you are as you travel about. I was just traveling in Israel and noticed that the right hand search advertisements were coming up in Hebrew. And before too long, a Google search on an HP for example brought up the Israeli HP web site, not the US. My searches were being localized.

Google looked at the path my packets were taking, figured out where I was, and responded by localizing my searches to that region. There are times when this can be helpful, but there are other times when you just want your search to mimic what you'd turn up at home. For those times when you'd rather not get information specific to the country you're visiting, you can instruct Google not to localize your search. To do, this go to www.Google.com/ncr. NCR, I believe, stands for "no country redirect." It tells Google to hold on to your default setting identity and not change things based on location.

When you type www.google.com/ncr and you're not in your home country, you'll be redirected to your usual Google page, with the usual (for you) ads and so forth. If you're in your home country when you type it, you'll get a page where you can choose some of your Google options. Read up at tech-recipes.com for more on Google redirect.

Google documents a slightly different method of redirecting your country location, which you can try as well. With cookies turned on, you can click on the google.com link on the bottom right side of the home page; with cookies disabled, you can set up a bookmark which will take you to the home page for your country.