How to regain country-specific searches on Google
03 Jul 2009 
2 Comments
Google seems to be testing the removal of country-specific searches from its country-specific domains, but there’s an easy way to regain the functionality.
Most domains still have the “Search the web / Search pages from…” radio buttons, but some (such as www.google.co.za) have lost them (and gained “Show only results for…” links at the bottom of the search results pages). Without the radio button’s functionality, the results that do come back might not be relevant to what you’re looking for:
By adding a country-specific metacode to the Google search results URL, you can still search only for results within the specified country. For example, the search URL for the term “iphone tethering” on www.google.co.za is:
http://www.google.co.za/search?q=iphone+tethering&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t
After the South African metacode (“&meta=cr%3DcountryZA“) has been added to the URL:
http://www.google.co.za/search?q=iphone+tethering&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&meta=cr%3DcountryZA
… only results from South Africa will be returned:
Below is a list of some country-specific Google search engines as well as their relevant metacodes. You don’t need to go to a country-specific version of Google to use these codes, they’ll all work from www.google.com too:
American Samoa – &meta=cr%3DcountryAS
Argentina – &meta=cr%3DcountryAR
Australia – &meta=cr%3DcountryAU
Botswana – &meta=cr%3DcountryBW
Brazil – &meta=cr%3DcountryBR
Canada – &meta=cr%3DcountryCA
Denmark – &meta=cr%3DcountryDK
Germany – &meta=cr%3DcountryDE
Netherlands – &meta=cr%3DcountryNL
South Africa – &meta=cr%3DcountryZA
The Bahamas – &meta=cr%3DcountryBS
United Arab Emirates – &meta=cr%3DcountryAE
United Kingdom – &meta=cr%3DcountryUK|countryGB
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since 1 july, when i type in google.co.za it directs me to google.com. other people i ask still have access to google.co.za with the “search south africa” radio button. this adding of &meta=cr%3DcountryZA to every search, although helpful thanks, seems to me like hard work – especisally considering the amount of googling i do every day. is there any way just to get to google.co.za?