Your opinions on redirection based on geo location

[daark.child]

My ISP recently changed my IP address and I have noticed that when I try to access certain websites, I am automatically redirected to the UK version of the site (Google and Yahoo being the main culprits). In most circumstances, I actually do not want to access the UK version, and I have to go through so many extra steps in order to access the content I want. I find this redirection really annoying although I can see how it can be useful for some people. I wish these sites would ask which site I want to visit instead of making assumptions. What are your opinions on this?

[oz]

I personally think you should be taken to the address you actually entered into your browser location bar. If you wanted to go to a different location, you could have entered that address into the location bar.

Have you tried using some different DNS servers?

[GNU-Fan]

Hello,

my thoughts are exactly the same as yours. Why do these websites always try to be smarter than they need to? Like the visitors were to stupid to browse the correct top level domain for the language they want...

As I prefer to use the American version of yahoo, too: You can demand entrance to it with a language prefix "en.yahoo.com"

[daark.child]

I personally think you should be taken to the address you actually entered into your browser location bar. If you wanted to go to a different location, you could have entered that address into the location bar.

Have you tried using some different DNS servers?

I am currently using opendns, but the same behaviour happens when I use my ISPs own DNS servers. On the topic of DNS servers, do you know of any other services similar to opendns?

GNU-Fan, did you mean us.yahoo.com? en.yahoo.com is not found, but us.yahoo.com works ok.

[GNU-Fan]

GNU-Fan, did you mean us.yahoo.com? en.yahoo.com is not found, but us.yahoo.com works ok.

Yes, "us" was the proper prefix.

[bigtomrodney]

I dislike it too. I have to say that initially I thought it was a good idea for people that wouldn't know any better but that idea went away fairly quickly. It can be quite frustrating. With google, is it related to your language settings too? Often Dell PCs that ship to Ireland will redirect to google.co.uk rather than google.ie and I notice that they often ship with English(British) as the system language.

Either way it annoys me. Slightly off-topic, I use eBay a lot and there is a distinct difference between what is listed on eBay.ie and what is listed when you check the "Available to Ireland" box in the advanced search. I think they must charge sellers a premium or somthing for the availability but all I know is that I get a lot more of the things I'm looking for when I choose "Available to Ireland".

[schwim]

Your nameservers won't make any difference in the site's detection of your location. A DNS server's sole job is to resolve a domain and point it to a server. It doesn't act as a proxy, which is what you would need to use to overcome these site's unwelcome helpfulness. Google is doing a simple whois on your IP and when it detects the ownership is in the UK, you're being to the site they want you to see. You need to return an IP that Google either thinks is in the US or can't get whois information on to get to the US version of the site.

The problem with most proxies is it is tough to find one that is stable and fast enough to use extensively.

thanks,
json

[daark.child]

Thanks for the information schwim. I guess for now I will have to bookmark the urls I actually want to go to, instead of entering the domain names in the address bar.