I’ve not had this problem before, but it’s been going on for days. I have to turn Express VPN off to search Google. Have tried all the U.S. locations and get the same or similar result. It think I’m on another continent.
I thought it was just me. Even tried a different server with no luck.
Hi u/S0_Crates and others here on this thread!
We’re aware that some users are experiencing this and unfortunately most of it comes down to Google having their own custom geo-location database for IPs that we have no ability to influence. We believe this has popped up recently as we are working on addressing the Captcha issue a lot of users have been experiencing, and while our solution is working well so far, it seems the additional IP space and techniques used have brought some location issues with Google itself.
We believe these tend to work themselves out over time as Google’s in-house location data is (again, we believe) based on traffic trends and so the more they see the locations (our VPN servers, not users, to be clear), the more their software leans toward adjusting what it understands to be the IP’s location. This is purely a guess at the moment, because they’re not open about their geo-location identification algorithms, but it’s unique to Google.
Generally we see a lot of organizations / websites using common geo-location DBs you can easily find online. We track these since we can subscribe to them, which allows us to understand and help influence most experiences, but since Google doesn’t use them, it’s very difficult for us to know what Google thinks or how to influence the data they do have.
We’re continuing to monitor and look for ways to improve this more rapidly, but it’s a tricky problem.
Disclaimer piece: I’m not with our Support team, but rather a Director within our engineering department. I engage on Reddit voluntarily, so my responses are not always quick.
Same here, but it thinks I am in Australia, not Atlanta like it should be! Hope they fix this soon. It’s a pain when all websites are showing costs in Australia currently and some sites will not work as they say not supported in your country. Same issues on phone and computer !
The recurring nightmare…
In my case I use: Express VPN, Windows 11, Brave browser, and I have a Google account.
To resolve it, do the following:
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Go to google.com
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Top-right corner, click on the Google Account [round] icon — a menu pops-up
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At the bottom left of that menu (April 2024) is a tab called More Settings, click on it.
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It then brings you to a Google Search Settings page.
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In the left pane you’ll see Privacy & Safety, and Other settings – click on Other settings.
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At the top of the Other settings page is Language & region – click on that, it’ll take you to the Languages & region page.
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On the Language and Region page, at the bottom of the Results language & region section, you’ll see Results region.
If this is set to Current Region and you’re having location issues in your search results, set it to your actual location, in my case the United States. I kept getting a lot of .AU results (again) when I should have been getting US results.
This resolved the issue for me.
I hope it works for you too.
I was having this issue for about the last week or so. I just checked and it seems to be resolved. It was kind of a pain for sure.
If you’re having this issue on mobile, make sure you turn you’re location off! I don’t personally use ExpressVPN, but was having the same problem with my VPN (trying to buy stuff for home while I’m abroad and everything was coming up in local currency).
Turns out Google is just basing results off more than just IP location. Hope this helps other confused searchers like me!
I’ve been dealing with it for a couple of weeks now too. Any luck figuring this out?
bumping this. Can’t get any USA location. It either gives me Australia, UK or my current location.
Is there a fix for this?
I think I resolved this, at least so far. The past week, I’d set ExpressVPN set to the same US city I always use, but Google searches thought I was in Australia.
Based on a few helpful posts in here, I changed 2 things. Not entirely sure which of them resolved it. Maybe both are required:
- Go to google.com in whatever browser. I’m using Safari. In the bottom right, there’s a “Settings” option. Choose Settings → Search Settings → Other Settings → Language & Region then from there, in the “Results Region” box, choose United States (or wherever you want Google to place you). Mine was set to “Current Region”, whatever that means. I set it to “United States”
- From that same Settings option on Google.com I went to Settings → Search Settings then this time, staying on the Privacy & Safety tab it defaults to, chose “Google Account settings” under “More options”. This launches you into your Google/Gmail account settings (you have to be signed into a Google/Gmail account for this step; maybe you do for all of this, not sure). From there, go to the “Personal Info” tab. Scroll down a bit and you’ll see “Addresses”. Both “Home” and “Work” addresses were “Not Set” for me. I just changed “Home” to the city I use with Express VPN. No specific address, just the city.
That was it. Now all my searches come back from that city I listed in step 2.
Btw here’s some info I found in Google’s documentation on how they determine location. Suffice to say I understand what some people on here mean by it “being complicated” as to what exactly they use.
ExpressVPN user here and it is still happening. Very annoying. It’s more than google (maybe ESPN uses google servers?) but trying to go to ESPN they give me the Australian site.
Use DuckDuckGo and send Google packing already.
This just happened to me, frustrating to say the least. Express VPN user for 5 years and this is the first time I’ve come across this. Based in the UK and all my shopping sponsored results etc are Australian. Turning my phone’s location off did nothing. Changing region and language to UK in my Google account did nothing. Turning off my VPN is the only work around that works, which obviously isn’t ideal.
I’m in UK, but I’m getting aussie websites!
Just encountered this issue today. The workaround already mentioned appears to still be effective at fixing. Here it is again: Settings (very bottom right) > Search settings > Other settings (Left tree) > Language & region > Results region > Manually select your country
This is also happening to me as well as having a city name being the same as one in England, so I need to triple specify my location when I search.
I’ve been getting this over the past few days. Incredibly annoying.
I had a chat with ExpressVPN on their site today. They claim it’s Google’s problem. Just frustrating having to turn the VPN off anytime I want to shop for something online. That’s kinda why I’ve had ExpressVPN since 2013. Cus those sites track shit.
Thank you for this context! Much appreciated.
Thanks for this info. Very helpful and cool considering how little feedback some companies offer.
Per my post above, I ran into this issue for the first time I can recall this week. I’ve used ExpressVPN for a few years now.
No matter which US location I choose, Google thinks I’m in Australia.
I confirmed it is a Google thing as you said. Same searches on DuckDuckGo have me in the right location.
Any progress on Google’s end you’re aware of, or in your ability to figure out however the hell they’re determining location?
Cheers. Other than this, I love ExpressVPN.