Getting Search Results in English Only, Google Search using Address Bar
My practice for using Firefox is to open as Blank Page, and use shortcut key of Ctrl+L. However, on every google search turn out to be in Chinese language. Google search customize the result based on my current location in hongkong, despite the fact that I have already change the keyword.URL to 'http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=
I have set my homepage to http://google.com/ncr and it only works if surf to home page once using Alt+Home. That works to obtain Google search in completely in English language
How to config FF to change the search result to fully English on first-use?
All Replies (6)
Firefox now searches using the setting that the search bar uses.
If you set that to use an English language search your HomePage and the Location bar will use the same search engine.
- Search bar - add, change and manage search engines on Firefox
- http://mycroft.mozdev.org/search-engines.html
It is also normally possible on a Google page to specify the language
Your local Service Provider however may be influencing your search results. There may be workarounds for that if necessary.
- Background info see http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dns
Tried them but doesnt work to return search results in English on first-use. Added a screenshot to show search result of keyword "coffee"
Using ncr sets a cookie that Google will check. If you normally clear cookies for Google between sessions — I can understand why one might want to do that — you could:
(1) Install a customized search plugin that adds the parameters Google needs to force results to English. See the link in John99's post to the Mycroft site for ideas. If you compare the URLs of the Chinese results page and the one you get after clicking "Change to English", that might be enough to build your own.
(2) Make the /ncr page a second home page that opens in a second tab at startup to preset that cookie before you do any searches.
More on second home pages:
But this also will open for every new window, so that's a bit of a waste.
(3) Find a cookie-related extension that will "preserve" selected cookies between sessions while clearing (or letting Firefox clear) the rest.
(4) Find or write (or have someone write for you) a userscript that watches Google results pages for that link to show results in English and "clicks" if it appears.
I'm sure there are other possibilities!
Modified by jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
I edited the file google.xml in C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\browser\searchplugins.
Basically, added <Param name="hl" value="en"/>. Returned results in English, only that the URL remains localized with .com.hk in HongKong or .com.tw while in Taiwan.
Thank you.
Hi rollerband, please make a backup of your custom plugin file. That folder probably will be overwritten at each upgrade.
Hi jscher2000,
this was important that I left out to ask in my earlier post. Thanks for your advice!