Set Google Chrome search to ignore location

The default search in Chrome 18 is

{google:baseURL}search?{google:RLZ}{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:instantFieldTrialGroupParameter}sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}&q=%s

How can I modify the search parameters to ignore the location, like in http://www.google.com/ncr

Remus Rigo

Posted 2012-04-09T19:55:47.810

Reputation: 2 623

Check the answers on this post.

– Kevin – 2012-04-09T20:07:00.110

have you tried that, it still redirects to google.ro – Remus Rigo – 2012-04-09T20:10:46.683

Answers

Find your Chrome User Data directory:

Windows XP: %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data
Windows 7: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data
Mac OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome
Linux: ~/.config/google-chrome or ~/.config/chromium

Open the Local State file in a text editor, and change the browser.last_known_google_url value to your desired domain. For example:

{
    ...,
    "browser": {
        ...,
        "last_known_google_url": "http://www.google.com/",
        ...
    },
    ...
}

user1686

Posted 2012-04-09T19:55:47.810

Reputation: 283 655

This does work for me today, except that the setting has moved to ~/.config/google-chrome-beta/Default/Preferences – poolie – 2014-08-23T17:37:18.053

Note that for Windows 8 it's not APPDATA, but LOCALAPPDATA ... So when you come back here to read why you didn't find it, this is why. – CS01 – 2012-08-13T11:21:49.233

1Using Chrome 22 on Mac, this doesn't seem to work anymore. Still getting German results :( – Martin Konicek – 2012-10-27T18:09:47.483

I confirm it doesn't work anymore. Version 31.x on Mac. :( – gilzero – 2014-01-11T13:10:18.390

Exit Chrome with Ctrl-Shift-Q.

Find the Preferences file in the user data directory, and change last_known_google_url to the desired value. Then restart it.

poolie

Posted 2012-04-09T19:55:47.810

Reputation: 165