Setting Your Preferences
Before you get started using Google, you should check your preferences. You can do this by going to the main Google search page at Google.com, and clicking on the Preferences link to the right of the search field.
Here you will be able to change the the settings that will define your Google Web Search user experience.
Interface Language: Set the language in which you want the interface to communicate with you. Pretty self-explanatory. Note that the Google programmers had a little fun here and included the Elmer Fudd and Klingon languages. 
Search Language: While English pages are the most prevalent, web pages are written in all languages. By default, Google will search without regard for language. It’s not going to translate a search word to search pages in another language, but it will look for the search term in any web pages written in any language. To keep this default selection make sure that Search for pages written in any language is selected.
Google recommends searching all languages, but why clutter up your search results page with site you won’t be able to read. I prefer to select only the languages I know how to read. You may select any number of languages here.
SafeSearch Settings: As everyone is aware, there are an overwhelming number of sites on the web that are not appropriate for kids, or most people for that matter. A search without safeguards in place can surely give you an unexpected eyeful.
Google’s SafeSearch setting lets you set up a safeguard to stop the inclusion of such sites in your search. Your choices are:
- Moderate filtering excludes most explicit images from Google Image Search results but doesn’t filter ordinary web search results. This is your default SafeSearch setting; you’ll receive moderate filtering unless you change it.
- Strict filtering applies SafeSearch filtering to all your search results (i.e., both image search and ordinary web search).
- No Filtering, as you’ve probably figured out, turns off SafeSearch filtering completely.
Number of Results: Set how many results you wish to see per page.
Results Window: Set whether or not to open search results in a new browser window. Default is no.
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I have attempted to change the preferences on the image search page, but the change does not go into effect (I did press the save preferences button). I tried logging out and coming back in, same effect (no change). Even after pressing the save button, the change does not go into effect. Any ideas?
My Google web searching keeps reverting back to Dutch. I have tried over and over to change back to English. What gives?
sam, have you tried clearing your cookies? if not do that, close the browser, restart and try again
How do I change/add to the toolbar on my e-mail? Need more (insert, addressbook, forward etc.)
Thank you,
Jackie
I have a problem in that under images, i do not have preferences. could you please tell me why, and how i should rectify it. Thanks
Help with the previous comment
I can set Google search preferences, and they are enabled for a while. Generally, a few days. Then, the search prefs revert back to the default settings. Any ideas? Thanks!
Ruth,
It sounds like you are clearing your cookies or your web history. Doing so will remove your settings.
My search results page doesn’t resemble anything like what I see in this tutorial.
Somehow I have changed the way search results are displayed. I have checked preferences and can find nothing that affects how the results are displayed.
Where do I find the search results display settings?
It seems that they have changed the behaviour, “Search for pages written in any language” doesn’t exist anymore, it only allows to search for up to 8 selected languages.
I think that’s completely stupid, first because there are people on this planet who understand more than 8 languages, second because some people might not care what language their result is in (depending on the search term it doesn’t matter, or I want to see ALL results in ANY language).
And third, because it depends on google deciding what language a page is written in. What if they determine the wrong language? What happens to pages written in more than one language? There might be results missing because of this…
For many (or even most) people, all this might not matter so much because they don’t speak more than one (or two) languages anyway. But why not keep it selectable by the user, as it used to be?