French Google website google.fr will soon be replaced

American tech giant Google is set to retire localised versions of its website, including French Google.fr. 

The move – also set to impact the UK, German, Spanish, and Italian versions of the site alongside several others – comes as localising internet searches through domains becomes less useful for users. 

These localised websites will reroute automatically to Google.com, the company’s worldwide search engine.

Users will not have to do anything manually for the switch to take place, although may be asked to reset certain preferences to ensure they receive optimal results on the site.

Local searches now obsolete

“Historically, these domain names allowed us to display localised search results," said Google in a press release on the change. 

Using these local domains meant prioritising websites from the country in question, however technological improvements mean this is no longer necessary.

“Over the years, our ability to provide a local experience has improved. In 2017, we began providing the same experience with local results for everyone… whether they were using google.com or [a local domain],” said the company. 

The changes will be rolled out over the coming months across the countries impacted. 

“While this update will change what people see in their browser address bar, it won’t affect the way ‘Search’ works, nor will it change how we handle obligations under national laws,” Google concluded.

Realistically, relatively few people still specifically look for ‘google.fr’ or another local equivalent in their internet search bar. 

The web browser Google Chrome – the most popular in France and most countries worldwide – uses Google.com as the default search engine, with the results being adapted to the person’s history and location. 

Users who want to continue consulting a specific version of Google will be able to change the type of results they see by updating search and language preferences in their settings.

It means for example, a Briton in France or a French person in Mexico can set up their google to primarily show results from their country of origin. 

However, whilst this may help show results in a person’ native language (although searching in English will generally bring up English results regardless, as will typing in French, etc), it may not help visitors searching for local information. 

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