Change Google's Search Domain in Google Chrome

If you are using Google Chrome, you could be wondering how to set default Google Search domain to be the U.S. google.com instead of your localized version. By using google.com, you get to enjoy the latest updates first-hand without having to wait for them to be pushed to localized domains.

A workaround on this is to edit a Chrome settings file.

1. Close all Chrome windows.

2. Go to Chrome's user profile directory (for example, in Windows Vista and Windows 7 the path is: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data\).

3. Open the file Local State in a text editor like Notepad, TextEdit or gedit.

4. Find the two lines that include "last_known_google_url" and "last_prompted_google_url" and change the Google URL from "http://www.google.tld/" (.tld=.co.uk, .fr, .co.jp etc.) to "http://www.google.com/" or any other Google domain.

5. Save the text file and restart Chrome.

6. If you see an infobar that asks if you want to switch to your local domain or keep google.com, choose the second option.

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