This past weekend when I started accessing the pages of my websites I noticed Google image ads were appearing in French instead of American. Not the text ads, just the image ads. Today when trying to access Google itself, I’m being redirected to the French version of Google, and any attempt to access Google’s tools gives me a French version as well. This problem is isolated to Google.
I checked the IP assigned to my ISP account and noticed that it has been changed. Great! That should make for a lot of changing permissions based on the old IP address! Anyway, a check of the IP at ARIN has my new IP assigned to a blackhole at Internic. That appears to indicate that the IP has been newly assigned to my ISP and Google has it listed as an assigned IP to a French entity (who probably had it before.)
I think if Google wants to use IP identity then that identity should be over-ridden for logged in visitors. I have an account with Google… I always use the English version. That should over-ride any attempt to assign by IP a country of origin. Now I’m faced with trying to access parts of Google in a language I can barely understand…
My thoughts.
This is happening to me too and all I have been able to do so far is to change the fr in the link to us and I get the us version again. I also got the Danish version yesterday. I understand this is a temporary and inconvenient solution.
Ken, 1 month later and I STILL get AdSense ads primarily targeted at English speaking visitors who reside in France (the image ads are totally French). The situation with Google search, and other Google tools, resolved itself in a matter of a couple of days after that post. This appears to be a situation isolated to MCHSI users, like you and I… and the AdSense situation isn’t going away.