Ah, but there you have it.
Google knows that ://www.google.ca is their Canadian portal, and
if you do searches through that portal, the results will indeed be
filtered somewhat differently, skewed toward Canadian websites and
Canadian advertising.
As there is also technology to determine whether a user's IP (Internet
Protocol) address (looks like 999.99.999.99) is registered through the
US or elsewhere, it is still entirely possible that Google is using
that as well, to decide how to filter Search Results for a given user.
From the PHP forum at Developer Shed, The Open Source Web Development
Site, Thread: "How do they know which country I am from?"
shantanuo: "When I visit a portal like altavista or yahoo,
a pop up window shows me india realted links.
How do they do that."
jjoske: "There are several ways that they could guess
where your are from:
They might have some kind of IP address mapping software.
You may have previously regesitered with Yahoo and said
that you where from India and they may have dumped a
cookie on your machine so that they know when you come
back, or you might be going through the Yahoo India portal"
Jeewhizz: "Also, you can use the Useragent to determine this
on some browsers :) "
http://forums.devshed.com/archive/5/2002/06/4/37928
Your IP Address can indicate your Internet Service Provider, and
depending on the ISP that you use, Google may be able to tell in what
country they *think* you reside.
First, you can check this by using GeoBytes' IP Address Locator Tool
at:
http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm
It's pretty scary, don't you think?
Next, I recommend that you delete any permanent Google cookies (In
Windows, these should be under C:\WINDOWS\Cookies ). Be sure also to
delete all your temporary Cookies and Internet files (In IE 6, pull
down "Tools", choose "Internet Options", under the "General" tab
"Temporary Internet Files:" click "Delete Cookies" and confirm, then
click "Delete Files" and confirm to "Delete all offline content" as
well.
Make sure that you have either disabled Cookies, or that you have used
your firewall or cookie-blocking software to forbid Google to store
cookies on your hard drive. (If you don't know how to do this, let me
know, and I will walk you through it.)
Then run a couple of searches from ://www.google.com , and note
the results. You can print the results, or you can "File --> Save As"
and save the pages to your hard drive as either "Web Page .html ,
complete" (will make a copy of graphics and other non-text items on
the page) or "Web Page .html only" (will save only the text), then use
these saved pages later to make comparisons.
Now go to ://www.google.ca , and run the exact same searches.
Print or save these results, too, and then compare them to the
searches run from ://www.google.com .
If you find differences, it's likely that Google is using your IP
address to decide in what country you live.
One way around this is to use an "anonymous" surfing site such as the
Anonymizer ( http://www.anonymizer.com ). Such services will mask your
IP address and fool the Googler into thinking that you're from the
U.S.
You can find sites that provide a similar service by clicking on the
Google link below:
anonymous surfing service
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=anonymous+surfing+service&btnG=Google+Search
Additional Search Strategy
"how do they know" country from ip address
://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=%22how+do+they+know%22+country+from+ip+address&btnG=Google+Search
Before Rating my Answer, if you have any questions about the above
information, please post a Request for Clarification, and I will be
glad to see what I can do for you.
I hope that this Answer has provided you with exactly the information
that you were seeking!
Regards,
aceresearcher |
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