Introduction
CyBlock Cloud utilizes gateways located in data centers in the U.S., U.K, and Canada. Users are provisioned on a proxy close to their geographical location to ensure the best performance as well as delivery of appropriate regional content.
This article describes how to resolve the possible problem of Google assigning an incorrect geolocation to your Google searches. If this happens, Google is detecting your egress IP address or the source IP address of your request incorrectly. This is an issue for any multiregional cloud provider as well, not only Wavecrest, and there seems to be no easy solution.
Issues
You may experience one of the following issues:
- Your google.com home page does not match with your location. For example, this could be happening to you if you are in the U.S. but are being sent to the Google home page for Canada (www.google.ca).
- The Google site is correct, but your search results are not relevant to your location, that is, results for the wrong city or region are being shown.
Solution
Wavecrest has extensively researched this issue and found it to be Google’s geolocation algorithm. This issue affects any cloud service vendor that covers customers across multiple geographical regions. We continue to communicate with Google, but so far they are unwilling to change their algorithm. We suggest the following:
- If you are experiencing a geolocation error or do not want to use your local Google site, you can bookmark http://www.google.com/ncr. Anytime you visit this page, you will be redirected to google.com instead of the incorrect Google site or your local Google site.
- Alternatively, if you have been redirected by google.com to another Google site (like google.ca), click the “Use Google.com” link in the bottom-right corner of the page to get to google.com. However, the suggestion above will produce better results.
- If your search results are not relevant to your location, change your location on Google as follows:
Google Chrome
- Go to www.google.com and perform a search.
- Scroll to the bottom of the search results page. Your location will be displayed on the left side.
- To update your location, click Use precise location.
- Below the address bar, if a panel appears from the Lock icon indicating that www.google.com wants to know your location, click Allow. See https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/179386 for more information.
- Reload the page, and Use precise location is replaced by Update location at the bottom of the page.
- If you click the Lock icon next to the Web address, you will see that under Permissions, Location is set to Allowed by you (i.e., the “Always allow on this site” option is selected in the drop-down list). Google.com will be added as a Geolocation exception, i.e., this site will always use your exact location information.
- To allow all sites to use your exact location automatically, change the Content settings in Chrome:
- At the top right, click the Customize and control Google Chrome icon and then Settings.
- At the bottom, click Show advanced settings.
- Under Privacy, click the Content settings button.
- In the dialog that appears, scroll down to the Location section. Select Allow all sites to track your physical location. See https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/142065 for more information.
Windows 10
- Go to Settings – Privacy – Location.
- Under Location, if you see “Location for this device is off,” click Change and set the slider to “On.” This sets the location service to on so that Windows, apps, and services can use your location.
- Under General location, set the slider to “On” so that apps that cannot use your precise location can still use your general location, such as city, zip code, or region.
- You can also set a default location so that Windows, apps, and services can use the default when a more exact location cannot be detected.
- Under Default location, click Set default. Then click Set default location and enter your address. Close the Maps window.
- To allow default apps to use your precise location, under Choose apps that can use your precise location, set the apps to “On.”
Microsoft Edge
- Go to www.google.com and perform a search.
- Scroll to the bottom of the search results page. Your location will be displayed on the left side.
- To update your location, click Use precise location.
- At the bottom of the page, click Yes to “Let google.com use your location.”
- Click Yes to “Let Microsoft Edge access your precise location.”
- Reload the page, and Use precise location is replaced by Update location at the bottom of the page.
Mozilla Firefox
- Go to www.google.com and perform a search on Google.
- Scroll to the bottom of the search results page. Your location will be displayed on the left side.
- To update your location, click Use precise location.
- Below the address bar, a panel appears from the Lock icon asking if you want to share your location with this site, google.com.
- From the Share location drop-down list, select Always Share Location. Use precise location is replaced by Update location at the bottom of the page. If you click the Lock icon next to the Web address, you will see that under Permissions, Access Your Location is set to Allow.
- Another option is to use a different search engine such as Yahoo or Bing. You will find that your search results match with your location.
Please note that the suggestions in this article reduce the likelihood that these issues will occur, but they may not completely resolve them and are not as a result of a Wavecrest issue.
If you need assistance, please contact Technical Support at (321) 953-5351, Ext. 4 or support@wavecrest.net.