How Google Made It A Little Harder To Reach Google.com From Outside The US

Google says the change is meant to help local searchers, but does the Right To Be Forgotten play a role?

People outside the United States may try to reach Google.com for a variety of reasons rather than use their own country-specific version. But Google has made reaching Google.com more difficult than in the past, a change that may help the company with both advertising and legal issues.

How & Why Google Has Redirected Away From Google.com

For many years, those outside the United States who tried to reach Google.com were usually redirected to their own country-specific version of Google. For example, if you were in the United Kingdom and tried to reach Google.com, you’d be rerouted to Google.co.uk. I know this well firsthand from having lived in the UK for over a decade and from regular trips back.
Generally, this redirection has been a benefit to searchers. Country-specific versions are designed to rank content better for people in those particular countries. Someone in the UK searching for “football,” for example, is going to find Google UK provides more relevant results for what they want (soccer) than going to Google.com and getting matches for American football.
The redirection has also been a benefit to Google, making it easier for the company to ensure that ads targeted to particular countries are showing up more accurately in front of people from those countries. Google can still do country-specific targeting even if people outside the U.S. go to Google.com, but it’s generally better if the particular country-specific versions are used.
Of course, some people still want to get to Google.com from outside the U.S. for their own good reasons. For example, when I was an expat living in the UK, I really did want Google.com over Google.co.uk for many of my searches. To accommodate this, Google long provided a link at the bottom of the home page of country-specific versions that said “Google.com.” Selecting this link would override the automatic redirection from that point forward.
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