What Search Engines Offer

When you go to Google, where your browser actually ends up depends on what country you're located in. Google can redirect your search to country-specific sites. But if you're in one country and you want to get information on another country, you'll have to go to Google's language tools page at http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en. Here you can limit your search both by country and by language.

Yahoo also has a huge selection of international country sites. See their list of Yahoos worldwide at http://world.yahoo.com/. Yahoo's world sites provide content in the local language. In the cases where there's more than one language—like Hong Kong—Yahoo will sometimes offer more than one language site and mark it appropriately.

Many search engines have country sites available. Try searching a full-text search engine for the name of the search engine and the name or abbreviation of the country in which you're interested. For instance, if you search Google for “Ask Jeeves” UK you'll get a pointer to Ask Jeeves' U.K. site. Not all search engines offer sites for all countries, but there are a lot of country-specific search engine resources out there.

Strangely enough, though, when I'm looking for country-specific sites focused on a single topic, I don't use Google or Yahoo. I find the Open Directory Project very useful.