[rtpg]

As someone doing a lot of language switching in my Google searches: should I preface every search with the language as well?

I search for some error message. Now I get answers in English. What if the person is actually German? Is everyone now going to be stuck with English websites?

What's the point of a search engine if you have to be super precise? Part of Google's magic is that it can figure you out even in imprecision.

[nludd]

I'm Dutch, so I have to switch languages often as well. I don't think I get what you're trying to explain. Could you provide some examples?

If I search for an English error message, I.. search for that message. If I search for a Dutch person, I look him up on the Dutch Wikipedia if he's well-known enough.

[rtpg]

You're learning Django, and the error messages are in English.

There might be a Dutch programming blog talking about this error message, but they'll never be able to be discovered because any English source will end up on top.

Another example: you are traveling in a foreign country, and don't really know the local language. You Google for information about a restaurant, hoping to land on something Trip Advisor-y. You end up on the local website, that you're completely unfamiliar with.

You want to offer a blog for English-speaking expats in Paris. Your exposure in Google is really low because of the niche audience, and the fact that French sources about places you're talking about will be much more viewed.

[nludd]

>There might be a Dutch programming blog talking about this error message, but they'll never be able to be discovered because any English source will end up on top.

Add "lang:nl".

>Another example: you are traveling in a foreign country, and don't really know the local language. You Google for information about a restaurant, hoping to land on something Trip Advisor-y. You end up on the local website, that you're completely unfamiliar with.

Look up the restaurant on https://www.tripadvisor.com/. Why would you use a general purpose search engine if you already know where to find the right information? Or you could add "lang:en" to your query.

>You want to offer a blog for English-speaking expats in Paris. Your exposure in Google is really low because of the niche audience, and the fact that French sources about places you're talking about will be much more viewed.

Those expats could add "lang:en" to their queries about the places you have blogged about.

I am not denying that there is some value in Google filling in these blanks for you, but 99% of examples about the indispensability of personalized search are rendered moot with very simple additions to the search query.

[coldtea]

>As someone doing a lot of language switching in my Google searches: should I preface every search with the language as well?

What part of the parent's argument is invalidated by the need of some outlier doing "lots of language switching" to add the language?

[marcosdumay]

My first language is Portuguese. Google failing to give me English results for software related queries was the one main reason I switched my browser search to DDG.

[rtpg]

Yeah I have this issue too, DDG's explicitness on this is nice.

the trick with Google, when its "language detection" isn't play well, is to add `hl=en` as a query param to the URL. This works on basically all Google properties as ewll.