google.com goes to google.ie

[method412]

Hi,

I'm not sure if there is a solution to this problem as I've searched and searched and also phoned up virgin's broadband support line to no avail.

In short at the start of May my connection died late on the Monday evening. It was still not back up Tuesday morning so I rebooted everything a few times, gave it half an hour, phoned the broadband status line etc which said no problems. Eventually I had to call the 25p/min support line as I had some work I needed to do. They confirmed there was a problem in this area (Cambridge) and that it would be up by 2-3 in the afternoon, they would also refund the cost of the call as it was their fault, not mine.

Connection came back on about 1 BUT ever since then when I go to google.com I am always redirected to google.ie

If I then click back to google.com it says to the bottom left "Go to google Ireland". Also, all adwords ads seem to be local to Ireland too.

Before the outage my IP had been in the range 80.x.x.x to 82.x.x.x for over 2 years probably. After the outage I was given an IP starting with 86.

Geo lookups on the 86 range sometimes have no information or they say I'm located in Hampshire - whereas before it has always been completely accurate down to the town I live in.

I put up with this problem for a while BUT then I noticed the BBC iPlayer no longer worked.

Anyway, this post is getting rather long!!! In short I finally gave in last week and phoned the 25p/min support number to see if I could get an answer.

After an inital call lasting nearly an hour, they said they'd call me back with a solution as they would "definitely solve this for me". The first call I made was at 17:30 - they called me back at 22:00 for the 2nd time telling me to reinstall IE and clear my temp internet files and cookies and that would solve it.

I told them outright that would not solve it as I have 3 other pcs all displaying the same issue. I connected one pc directly to the cable modem and still the same issue.

Doing an ipconfig /release and renew didn't solve it so eventually I found some page via google that if I could change my mac address I would most likely get a new IP.

Luckily my router allows me to give it any mac address I want, so since last week I've changed the router's mac address and unplugged the cable modem - reconnected fine with a new IP. Each new IP I've had has always started with 86. and I always get the same issue with google.

Tonight however I've managed to get an IP with which the BBC iPlayer now functions again - but google still thinks I'm in Ireland, which I guess I can live with.

So in summary - this is slightly irritating and there appears to be nothing I can do about it unless I manage to get an IP in the 80 - 82. range as I had before. And virgin's technical help line are absolutely clueless and insisted it was a problem with my PC when I categorically proved to them it wasn't!

[samandmax]

Could try http://www.google.com/ncr which probably stands for "no country redirect"

or http://www.google.com/webhp for classic

[ceedee]

I've seen many VM users reporting similar problems in the Tech Support newsgroup, particularly with the BBC iPlayer, and it seems that using a proxy frequently provides a workaround.

You sound like you 'know your way around' but for the benefit of others:

To set up a proxy in Firefox, go to Menu/Tools/Options and select the Advanced icon at the top and then the Network tab.
Now select Connection Settings and click on "Manual proxy configuration", enter webcache.virginmedia.com as the HTTP Proxy and 8080 as the Port, and click OK and exit.
You may need to restart Firefox (or even reboot) for the changes to take effect.
I'm sure other browsers will have similar options in the configuration section.
Many routers also have the facility, which could be useful for problems with other http applications and multiple devices.

Good luck!

[v0id]

From what I've read, usually it means you've been put on the wrong UBR and a call to tech support sorts it out