For a long time, there was an easy way to conduct a Google search in a country other than the one you’re in. If you wanted to get results specific to Japan, for instance, you would visit www.google.co.jp; to get Australian results you would visit www.google.com.au — but this trick no longer works. Google has announced that it will now always serve up results that are relevant to the country that you’re in, regardless of the country code top level domain names (ccTLD) you use. The reason given is a little bizarre. The search giant says that the change has been introduced because of the way people are using the search engine these days. It says: “around one in five searches on Google is related to location, so providing locally relevant search results is an essential part of serving you the most accurate information.” The argument seems counterintuitive, however. Anyone who has changed the ccTLD has done so consciously, and for a reason — for Google to override this decision is strange...
Comments