It may be called the World Wide Web, but surfers in Canada can’t be blamed for wondering whether they’re always getting access to the best the Internet has to offer. Whether it’s websites that automatically redirect you to a Canadian subsidiary, or blank video viewers on websites like hulu.com that are supposed to contain U.S. network television content (but don’t because of territorial broadcasting rights), there’s mounting evidence that the Internet, for all its vaunted global-ness, can sometimes be an infuriatingly local experience.

Take Google, the world’s most popular search engine. Most browsers will automatically direct Canadians away from the original google.com site toward the .ca version (and its Canadian content) if it detects that your computer is located north of the border, even if you type in google.com. The same is true for associate sites such as Google News and Google Finance. Similarly, Canadian visitors to yahoo.com also get redirected to a Canadian version of the site. The efforts seem odd considering the Web is supposed to be borderless and all about individual choice. By contrast, msn.com shows first-time Canadian visitors a pop-up window with a large Canadian and U.S. flag and asks them where they want to go.

In Google’s case, the search giant says side-stepping the redirect feature is a simple as clicking the “Go to google.com” link on the main page once. But those who are in the business of figuring out secrets behind Google’s complicated search algorithms say it isn’t quite that simple, because Google still knows where your IP address is located and can make adjustments accordingly. “If you’re looking at google.com results while on a computer in Australia, you’ll probably get a 30 to 50 per cent different result set than someone searching the same query in the United States,” says Justin Cook, who runs a search optimization business in Toronto called Convurgency.

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