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I would like to have my primary language (English) as the main language in Google Searches. I know the thread Setting Google results to stay in a language, regardless of location but addresses like http://www.google.com/en are redirected wrongly. So I would like to prevent all together some languages because they are used wrongly because I have visited such locations sometimes in my past. Secondary languages ar the following languages in Fig. 1

Fig. 1 Secondary languages in settings, Fig. 2 Search results, Fig. 3 Settings

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I need to stay many days per month in Latvia; and many other countries per month. However, for some reason, Google wants to show me everything in Latvian, although I cannot speak or read it. I feel such a behaviour disturbing. I have went through all the language helps of Google, like here; contacted them unsuccessfully about the case but now also in their official Google Search Forum here. I have seen this behaviour now one year in Google search; here the left-hand-side bar of the Google search after searching "metso kirjasto" in Fig. 2 where the extraction contains .

  • Finnish (heading)
  • Latvian (most of the parts)
  • Swedish (Biblioteka)
  • ...

The situation feels more disturbing when Google messes up things with many languages; etc putting here Finnish, Latvian and Swedish together. It would be ok for me if there was no Latvian.

Search

Searching gives me these parameters in the address bar

  • https://www.google.lv/?
  • gws_rd=cr%2Cssl&
  • ei=Ns4PV7OAJebt6QTowrPgCw&
  • pli=1# - unknown parameter for instance here about What does &pli=1 parameter (and others) do?
  • q=metso+kirjasto

Search with the extension Don't track me Google

You see pli parameter is gone but the option safe=off as a new one

  • https://www.google.lv/?
  • gws_rd=cr,ssl& - google web server redirection country referred and ssl
  • ei=_9APV9D4LIXN6QTSyaToCg#safe=off& - time of execution and security off
  • q=metso+kirjasto

Language still stays in Latvian. The problem does not seem to be in gws_rd=cr,ssl& because google.com/ncr returns the output also in Latvian.

Search google.com/ncr

Output still in Latvian, like the screenshot above.

Settings

Settings in Fig. 3 where no Latvian. I have similar settings or only English in other OSes and systems too.

I have removed all my cookies, but it does not solve the problem.

I logged out Stackexchange in all devices. The google search "metso kirjasto" returns still the output as described above with most Latvian content.

No VPN.

Hypothesis about the Problem

I cleared all cookies. I searched "metso kirjasto" and everything was in English. I now login to Stackexchange with two-step login. I do again the Google Search "metso kirjasto". Everything is now like described above: Latvian mesh with Finnish and Swedish. I think Google's login system is somehow conflicting here. This is not apparently related to third-party cookies because I disabled them but I see the same behaviour still.

I opened a thread about the issue here too because the problem is still there.

Hardware: Chromebook 1, Chromebook 2, Asus Zenbook UX303UB
OS: Chrome OS, Windows 10 and all latest distros, OS X all latest versions, Linux Debian 8.5 - 8.7
Internet browsers: Google Chrome 56.x - 57.x, Firefox, Opera, Safari

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  • Make sure your browser’s language settings are also set to English as the primary language. Commented Feb 28, 2016 at 7:28
  • @Alex I have English as my primary language in all browsers of mine. Commented Feb 28, 2016 at 7:30
  • Strange. It could be just a cookies issue then. Have you tried removing all of Google’s cookies and see if it still behaves like this? Commented Feb 28, 2016 at 7:33
  • @Alex Cookies are not the problem. Cleared them and problem still coming. Commented Feb 28, 2016 at 7:36
  • 1
    Maybe there are failures on the Google side. Did you already reported this in the Google Search help forum? Commented Apr 14, 2016 at 20:28

2 Answers 2

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Using Google while being signed out will ignore account settings. If are signed in and your main language is not used in www.google.com try

  1. To clear out the cache and cookies
  2. Go to http://www.google.com
  3. Sign in

Now the Google's home page should be displayed in your option for your account´s main language.

If the above doesn't work for any reason, a way to "force" that the Google's homepage be shown in English is to include the URL parameter hl=en. In the case of Google (aka Google Search) try

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en

For other languages, instead of en use the proper language code (en-uk for United Kingdom English, es-419 for Latin American Spanish, es for Spain Spanish, etc.)

Since 2017 Google no longer redirects users to country domains for several services. Ref. Making search results more local and relevant.

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  • The above settings do not work. I am using two-step verification. Those other variants, I do know, but find them difficult in real life. Commented Apr 13, 2016 at 19:03
  • That is weird. Add more details to the question like the URL in the omnibox / address bar. Commented Apr 14, 2016 at 11:08
  • Which url do you want? You can choose just google.com and it always go to the language where my IP address is. Commented Apr 14, 2016 at 14:35
  • You could add the URL of the source of the screenshots in the question. Usually Google redirects users from a web search result page to another URL including several parameters. See the following question for further details: webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/22291/…. The same could happen with other Google services too. Commented Apr 14, 2016 at 15:56
  • I think this is the problem of the source gws_rd=cr,ssl&. Google always choose country referred option for me although I do not want it. Commented Apr 14, 2016 at 17:29
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I asked a question here, but it got closed as a duplicate of several questions including this one.

And none of the solutions found worked, so I am very unsatisfied with it.

So I have wasted many hours doing research about this and finally came up with a working solution. I want to post it here so it may save time for people in the future faced with the same problem.

You need to start your search at this page if you search with www.google.com's search bar.

https://www.google.com/webhp?gl=us&hl=en&gws_rd=cr&pws=0&udm=14

The above page should be in US English regardless of your GeoIP result, and the language of the search results would be mostly in English (but not guaranteed).

The parameter gl=us forces the results region to be United States. hl=en forces the display language to be English. gws_rd=cr forces the top level domain to be .com (you stay at www.google.com). pws=0 disables search results personalization. udm=14 disables AI crap.

Add it to your address bar and set it to your homepage, so that if you search in the search bar your search results won't be localized.

But I find the above limiting and inconvenient. Nowadays I search directly by using the address bar. And the above won't work.

So we need to add a custom search engine, in this example I use Firefox because that is what I use.

The syntax of Google search url is like this:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&key=val

For example, without any additional parameters, if you search "alien", %s is alien and the following url returns Google search results for "alien":

https://www.google.com/search?q=alien

Now if your search query contains spaces, for example "the heat death", the search result url should look like this:

https://www.google.com/search?q=the+heat+death

Additional parameters are added like this:

https://www.google.com/search?q=the+heat+death&gl=us&hl=en&gws_rd=cr&pws=0&udm=14

& separates pairs of parameters, and = separates the key and value of a parameter pair.

Now the following url disables the autocorrect and forces search results to be in English:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&gl=us&hl=en&gws_rd=cr&pws=0&udm=14&nfpr=1&lr=lang_en

For example, if you search aloen Google search will return results about alien, with nfpr=1 Google search will return results about aloen instead. The following page is guaranteed to be in US English and about aloen:

https://www.google.com/search?q=aloen&gl=us&hl=en&gws_rd=cr&pws=0&udm=14&nfpr=1&lr=lang_en

I used this Firefox extension to add custom search engines to Firefox. Use it to add the second last url given above as a search engine, then go to about:preferences#search and change the default search engine to the one you just added.

Now Google finally behaves.

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