For users who would like to use Google.com outside of the U.S., Google has a feature known as Google.com/ncr, NCR meaning, “No Country Restriction.” There have been recent reports that this No Country Restriction feature has not been operational for the past week. John Mueller, of Google Webmaster Communications, responded via twitter of this report stating that he “suspects it’ll be back.” This may mean that the NCR feature is only disabled temporarily and should be available to users within the next couple of days.
The last reported issue with the NCR feature was dated back in 2012, but ever since, the feature has been working without fail, the solution mentioned in 2012 was to use Google Chrome as your main browser which would then allow non-U.S. searchers to access Google.com instead of their own country’s Google search engine.
However, there has been much speculation that Google will be terminating this feature entirely. Most recently, Google has removed the search location filter from its search tools menu option to make it more difficult for searchers to search as if they were in a different location. The goal is to make it increasingly difficult for non-U.S. Searchers to search as if they were in the U.S., but Google has mentioned that the reason for the removal of the search location filter was due to lack of use and for no other reason.
We will continue to monitor the performance of Google’s NCR feature for any changes if and when the feature will be fully operational again.