Tell HN: Google ignores English searches and forces localized results

54•jeanlucas•2h ago

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.

Comments

necovek•1h ago

Generally, I find the country domains behave consistently: I imagine google.co.uk might still give you English as the main language.

But really, Google has been defaulting to a language based on GeoIP data for a long time now.

jeanlucas•1h ago

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

morkalork•1h ago

google.ca in Canada is a little schizophrenic in Québec if you are anglo. Especially when you are switching back and forth. Try an English query first, don't find good results, try French and get the same damn English reddit posts but translated into French? What?

denysvitali•1h ago

?hl=en

jeanlucas•1h ago

sigh

worked, I will bookmark this for now, hope it keeps working. Thanks.

denysvitali•1h ago

It should work across all Google products

jeanlucas•1h ago

My next dream would be to have Google stop suggesting me videos in Brazilian Portuguese... and most recently songs, but that's an app issue, not web :(

delduca•1h ago

Huehue

tambourine_man•1h ago

I wish it was that simple.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46413797

llamaboy•1h ago

It’s a pain in the ass when you travel a lot…

jeanlucas•1h ago

Or when you're working with a company in a different country...

drnick1•1h ago

Set up a VPN to your own home/office.

SyrupThinker•1h ago

FWIW the decision-makers at Google (and some other companies) should just learn what the Accept-Language header is for.

shadowgovt•1h ago

They know. They also know that almost no regular users know what it is, what it's for, or how to configure it. The search fails where the accept-language was wrong far dominate the numbers over the search fails where the accept-language was ignored.

SyrupThinker•18m ago

> The search fails where the accept-language was wrong far dominate the numbers over the search fails where the accept-language was ignored.

Wouldn't this imply that "regular" users are running their OS and/or browser in a language they do not want to use for search? This seems unlikely to me, or is there some systematic reason that results in this being the case?

burnt-resistor•1m ago

WireGuard, especially if home ISP has a public IPv4 that serves ports. (Don't outsource control and access to TailScale.)

franciscop•1h ago

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.

jeanlucas•1h ago

Japan is an entire situation to me as well, Google completely walls off results in Japanese, even when I specifically want it. Sometimes I need to search things in English, but on the Japanese web and for that I think VPN might be the only way.

I run a small personal VPN, but not one of these company solutions, might be time to do that.

dendark•1h ago

It happens to me all the time too, it's fucking annoying as fucking fuck, it doesn't seem to be a solution

derriz•1h ago

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?

toomuchtodo•1h ago

Try https://kagi.com/

drnick1•1h ago

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.

pixl97•1h ago

We pay the most for things that are free.

drnick1•35m ago

Software can absolutely be free as in freedom and as in beer. Once code exists, it costs basically nothing to duplicate, so generally speaking it does not make sense to pay for it. When you pay for games for example these days, you are essentially paying for online play (servers) and to fund future development, in addition to "pure profits."

bigstrat2003•1h ago

The obvious solution here is actually to pay for search. Then the company actually cares about keeping you happy, because you are their source of revenue.

drnick1•26m ago

In principle, yes, but in practice the privacy claims are unverifiable. A for-pay search provider may stick track you and serve you ads (in the ranking of results) and will probably do an even better job than Google at it since they can verify your identity through payment and profile you accurately no matter what device you use.

Diti•1h ago

> 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).

drnick1•38m ago

Because there are free and privacy respecting alternatives. I use DuckDuckGo, but you can also use meta-engines that anonymize traffic like SearXNG. None of these require accounts or payment methods that effectively de-anonymize you. Finally, if you really like Google for some reason but don't want the side effects, use an adblocker and a VPN.

pachouli-please•52m ago

If you like it and want it to be maintained in a way that at least somewhat aligns with you (or at least your dollar), you need to pay for it

jeanlucas•31m ago

Of those options, paying for search seems like the cheapest.

A VPN might win on price (sometimes? kagi is just $5/mo), but relocating countries to get better results when searching for code related stuff feels a bit over-optimized. And as we know, premature optimization is the root of all evil.

iamdamian•1h ago

This is the way. In 2025, I don't think you can expect quality when the incentives aren't aligned (in this case, that you are a customer).

jeanlucas•1h ago

I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m curious enough to try it now. Thanks.

Kwpolska•1h ago

Google stopped caring about a good user experience a long time ago, shareholders want more AI slop, not regular searches. I've changed my default search engine to DuckDuckGo, it's much saner overall (although I sometimes need to fall back to Google with !g for extremely niche topics).

shadowgovt•1h ago

The problem is that technical users aren't Google's target audience.

renegat0x0•1h ago

searxng allows me to use various locations

https://searx.space/

drnick1•1h ago

> 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.

Your problem start here. Don't give Google your phone number, location, or payment information. Google is a monstrous surveillance machine. If you can't do without Google search for some reason, at least use a VPN or Tor.

hahn-kev•1h ago

Yeah I get this a lot, it's really annoying. You can go into settings on Google search and change it to the specific language and culture you want. However it does reset on it's own from time to time.

Marsymars•1h ago

A good part of this is locale-based and not language-based - I find that Google will prefer often local (English) results over the canonical English results that I'm actually looking for.

Though I primarily use Kagi now.

e.g. If I search "world's best pizza" the top Google result is a random local pizza joint that isn't even top-5 in my medium-sized city (but who have included "worldsgreatestpizza" in their long URL), and then a bunch of Facebook results. Kagi's top couple results are sites with rankings of (ostensibly) the world's top pizza restaurants.

Qem•1h ago

Same problem. My workaround is to use Yandex instead. In my experience it's consistently returning more relevant results than Google for some time already, and there's less censorship while searching torrent related content.

antiloper•1h ago

If you don't want to pay for Kagi: https://duckduckgo.com/

Imustaskforhelp•56m ago

Let me add a few more search providers

brave search ecosia (environment focused) qwant mojeek (a little bit obscure) swisscows (once again obscure)

There is also searx and searxng and their public instances which actually are a mix of many of the search providers I listed about.

Giving references to anyone whose interested perhaps but duckduckgo is a good option to start out and its something that I myself use.

breppp•1h ago

did you try using https://www.google.com/ncr ? that used to work

also https://www.google.com/?hl=en might be effective

shadowgovt•1h ago

Google has a lot of data to see how the average user uses computers. The problem is, that data tells them that the number of people who misconfigure their localization settings (or can't configure them; shared computer) is way larger than the people using those settings on purpose to try and request non-local results. So they err far, far on the side of using your location as a signal of intent over your machine and browser configuration.

ETA: https://www.google.com/advanced_search appears to give options for tuning your language and region in the search results. I haven't used it personally in ages, but it may give you what you're looking for.

jeanlucas•54m ago

Your comment makes sense to me and it feels like a Windows trade-off: optimizing for the average user while eroding power-user controls; Mark Russinovich has talked about the need for explicit, advanced modes instead of burying power-user behavior behind heuristics in one of his videos about what he would change in Windows.

Google could benefit from the same idea: an expert mode where explicit signals override inference with genuinely usable advanced search features (language, filters, etc) as first-class tools.

theodric•1h ago

I noticed that Reddit behavior recently, but not the other things. I searched for "<productname> 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 post had been auto-translated from English, at which point I got rather annoyed. That €30 in the translated post was $30 in the original: that's not localization at all, rather fabrication. Fucking infuriating.

My theory was that Reddit was shotgunning LLM-translated versions of posts at Google in a bunch of languages to increase hit rate. Maybe Google's really at fault.

Pretty soon it's going to be impossible to find anything on Google thanks to all the transparent autoensloppification of everything, everywhere.

sippeangelo•1h ago

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!

tambourine_man•1h ago

Google is institutionally incapable of understanding that some people can speak multiple languages. Only reliable solution I found is to create one account for each language and restrict the number of available languages to just that one in:

https://www.google.com/preferences?lang=1

YouTube is the worst offender these days. I get Portuguese videos auto-dubbed to English and vice-versa even though I can understand both and with no way to disable other than account switching.

It also can't tell Portuguese from Spanish in search queries.

xeeeeeeeeeeenu•1h ago

>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=

theodric•1h ago

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...

Imustaskforhelp•55m ago

hey! Quick suggestion but if you create an firefox extension, please open source it. It immensely boosts my trust in an extension and I doubt that it would be considered a shill (atleast in my book) if you open source it and I don't think that you earn from the extension but if its open source and people like it, it opens up a pathway where people can donate if this extension helps their problems!

estebarb•1h ago

Not only search: titles and description of Youtube videos are being translated. Colab UI is now in Spanish (using technical terms that make no sense).

Some people may want translation, mostly people that only speak a single language. But for most bilingual people, being forced a translation (a lower quality one), is a worse experience. I'm surprised that no one at Google has pushed back this anti-user behavior. It is like no one at Google knows more than one language.

The worst part is when traveling. Google ignores the browser settings, so it throws me Japanese or German website, even if my browser settings clearly says English then Spanish.

_august•1h ago

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.

coffeefirst•1h ago

I 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.

jeanlucas•51m ago

>I’m sure it’s even more annoying when you’re bilingual and can’t turn it off.

At least on this point now it is possible to turn it off.

cromka•1h ago

Forcing 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.

guntis_dev•1h ago

Google 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.

Imustaskforhelp•1h ago

I imagined truman show / scenes from truman show where they show ads from your last line.

Spoiler alert if you haven't watched truman

But That is incredibly uncanny and I think this is the reason why, I think truman must have caught what's happening and also I saw this youtube video trying to explain that truman knew about the show the whole time and the scene and the time he was digging dirt in the first scenes of the movie, he was actually digging his escape route.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mCXYfv-URg

Imustaskforhelp•1h ago

Please 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.

DetectDefect•1h ago

Duckduckgo is hosted on Microsoft-owned servers, how could that possibly be considered "private" by any stretch of imagination?

sawmurai•39m ago

I had to set the language of my google account to English to make it finally stop auto translating YouTube. Setting the language in YouTube had worked for a few weeks, then it would be reset again. Setting the language of the google account itself appears to have fixed it for good.

esseph•26m ago

Disabled Google search page location permissions.

Should fix your localized results problem.

burnt-resistor•5m ago

Workaround: a VPN.

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Tell HN: Google ignores English searches and forces localized results

Comments