Google has finally bid adieu to its age-old practice of using country code element of its domain name to tailor search results for its users. Going forward, the search engine giant will use location data of users to serve the results.This essentially means whether you switch to google.co.uk or google.co.in, search results won’t change and will be based on your location.“So if you live in Australia, you’ll automatically receive the country service for Australia, but when you travel to New Zealand, your results will switch automatically to the country service for New Zealand. Upon return to Australia, you will seamlessly revert back to the Australian country service,” Google explained on its blog.“It’s important to note that while this update will change the way Google Search and Maps services are labeled, it won’t affect the way these products work, nor will it change how we handle obligations under national law.”Google further said that the update will help users receive the most relevant results that have been tailored based on their location. This will also help deliver a consistency among all Google services including Gmail, YouTube and Google Maps.
The latest change to Google search appears to be based on rising app-culture and mobile internet usage, which generally relies on users’ location. Though if you still wish to see Google results based on another location, there’s a workaround. All you need to do is go to Settings (located below the search bar on desktop) > Search Settings > Change the country under Region Settings.