This is an in depth look at how Google and Bing recognize your country and language, and how to set it up in your bookmarks.
Google’s Old Behavior *
* This is just for historical reason. Google no longer redirects the country level, but only the language level for places where more than one official language exists, like Canada. See Google’s New Behavior for the current way.
When it comes to Google, having the right country in your bookmark isn’t really important. Well, it can be, but it’s a largely automated process. Everything is done via cookies and automatic detection. If your Canadian for example, bookmarking www.google.ca doesn’t guarantee you’ll fall on the Canadian site.
The first thing Google relies on is your computer’s location variables. You could be in Canada and have that set to the United States for example, which would redirect your www.google.ca attempt to .com. The same applies to languages, so you could end up on www.google.ca in French even though your computer’s interface is in English. All major web browsers except Webkit-based ones, which means Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera, but not Safari and Chrome, allow overwriting the language variable. One particularity of this feature is that once set, it stays that way regardless of changes applied to the system language variable (at least under Windows XP), yes, even in IE. In other words, if you happen to move country, it would be a good idea to learn how to change both system variables and browser variables.
The second thing Google looks for, but never acts upon without your consent, is your IP address’s country, something easily discoverable because your IP is associated in a range of IPs that have been bought by your ISP (Internet Service Provider). Once it knows that, in some cases, Google will offer you a choice to go to your own country associated version of the site. Hence, for me, a Canadian, even though I may be on Google US, a link “Go to Google Canada” is always present because Google knows from my IP that I reside in Canada. But some country domains are absolutely uni-lingual, ie. Japan. There’s only one place in the world where you’ll read Japanese, and only one language in Japan, so a .jp request always gives the Japanese page, with no mention of other languages whatsoever, no matter what the ISP or previous Google sites visited. English on the other hand is spoken around the world, and there’s a mighty list of localities for that language.
The third thing Google depends on in the cookie it sets for your browser. If I happen to click on that “Go to Google Canada” link previously mentioned, the cookie is then set to Canada and the English language. Hence, querying www.google.com redirects me to www.google.ca in English. Because Canada also had French as an official language, Google also notices me that “Google.ca offered in: français” is a possibility, which by clicking on it, again, will mark my cookie with Canadian French, thus redirecting further .com attemps to www.google.ca in French.
Google also offers links to other languages, regardless of any of the information above. Since Canadians often go to Google.com for US results, a link to Google.com is always visible on the .ca website, much in the same way as the .co.uk website for the United Kingdom.
Google’s New Behavior
Noticing the lacking capability to go to a specific Google domain without being redirected, Google decided to remove the country-based redirection rules on its cookies not so long ago. Thus, it works exactly as the old behavior, but without country redirection, which means typing www.google.com will always go to the US site. Google still relies on your language variables to get to the right language the first time in case you live in a country where two or more official languages exist, still relies on your IP’s geographic location to give you a country option on www.google.com and still relies on cookies to set your navigation in a given language.
Before the new behavior, it was impossible to bookmark a specific country. Now all you have to do is bookmark the right top-level country domain. Another functionality of languages on Google is passing it an argument.
Say I type www.google.com, I land on the US English site.
Say I type www.google.com/webhp?hl=fr, I land on the US French site. Well, there’s no such thing as US French, so it really is just the US page with the menus in French. Although not available in all languages, you can’t search the US site with Japanese menus, this can be useful.
Take note though that www.google.com/webhp?hl=fr is not the same as www.google.fr. One is the US site in French, the other is the France site in French. It’s important, because the search results are different. Interestingly enough though, it’s possible to type the following: www.google.fr/webhp?hl=en. That’s Google France in English. Clever no?
However, keep in mind, English searches on Google France still return English results. They even return a different set of results. Search for Bakery on Google.fr French and Google.fr in English doesn’t return the same results, despite the search term and the site’s location being the same.
Bing
Bing relies entirely on your system’s language variables to guess your language and redirect you to the right homepage. Unlike Google though, some of Bing’s features are only available in the United States, and again, you might want to have local results from the US instead of Canada.
Bing does offer the capability to choose one’s language, and in fact, does not use top-level domains like Google. Bing.com is Bing.com, even in Japan.
Bing’s location is made of two arguments, the language and the location. Typing www.bing.com/?setmkt=en-US goes to the US website in English. Going to fr-FR for France and than changing to en-FR for France in English works perfectly well. In fact, Bing’s location language modifier works way better than Google’s. Searching for Bakery on the France site gives the same results, regardless of the interface’s language, which is what should happen.
Here’s a quick list of language variables you can try out:
zh-TW (Taiwan)
zh-CN (China)
jp-JP (Japan)
fr-CA (French Canada)
en-CA (English Canada)
Bing also includes links on the top right to change it yourself in a much more fashioned way than Google, via an actual list of available languages. On the Canadian site for instance, you’ll see Canada (français) on the English version. Clicking on Canada brings you to the country change page, and clicking on français changes the site to the French version of Bing Canada. Some sites like the US site don’t include an alternative language, but will do if you came from another language that linked there (ie. coming from the Japanese Bing puts United States (日本語) in the top right).
