382783 - Search Bar Defaults to German for Irish Users

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Search, defect)

Description

[Philip O'Reilly]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070515 Firefox/2.0.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070515 Firefox/2.0.0.4

When using the search bar the default google search is in German for Irish Users. All results are from .de and not .ie 

I have tested this on several Windows PCs and Mac OsX machines runing XP / OsX 10.4

My regional settings on the machines are set to English (Ireland). I have edited the individual search config files on the mac/pc to correct the problem

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set Region to English (ireland)
2. Run Firefox
3. Search using searchbar default
Actual Results:  
Results in German
http://www.google.de/search?q=firefox&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a

Expected Results:  
Results in English but Irish version of Google firefox

Result should have been this:
http://www.google.ie/search?q=firefox&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a

Comment 1

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070515 Firefox/2.0.0.4

Yeah, there's definitely something wrong. When I change the language in Tools -> Advanced -> Languages to English/Ireland, I get the Dutch Google interface and Dutch search results.
But when I change the language to French, I get the French Google interface and French results.

Comment 2

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

I see the same problem with English/United Kingdom and English/United States. But when I set it to German, I get German results. And Danish gives Danish results. So possibly it has a problem with English languages.

Comment 3

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

For unclear reasons I can't reproduce it anymore. Although I still see a Dutch interface and results when I have no languages set and the default is English/United States. But that's nothing new. When I set it to English/Ireland and move that language to top, I still see Dutch. But when I add French and set it to French, and then move Ireland to top again, I see English.

Maybe it's just Google :).

Comment 4

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Google uses various metrics to determine your location; I think IP-based geolocation and the Accept-lang header are two of them. It could be that their detection logic is flawed. If that's the case there's nothing we can really do about the problem other than contacting Google and asking them to look into it.

Comment 6

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Any update on this bug?

Comment 7

[Ryan Flint [:rflint] (ping via IRC for reviews)]

Google probably had incorrect IP location information for you. If this is still an issue, see: http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=873 which also includes a link to report geolocation issues.