Setting default search engine in Chrome to stop geographical redirection

I was somewhat frustrated when using Google Chrome when abroad, as it would always redirect to the local version of Google. The change in interface isn't the main problem, the problem is that localised versions of Google searches give localised results, which is more of a problem when you don't speak the language. There are options to change your Google account display settings, but this don't seem to always stick, and if you aren't logged in, or have multiple accounts then this setting doesn't help. Also there is the tip to use the "No Country Redirect" option, by accessing your prefered version of Google, followed by "/ncr", e.g. http://www.google.com/ncr however this only works if you set it as a bookmark or homepage, and not from the Omnibar.

Finally, I found a way to set the Omnibar to use my local Google. Go to chrome://settings/ and scroll down to the "Search" section. There, the deafault entry for Google will be as follows:

{google:baseURL}search?q=%s&{google:RLZ}... (clipped)

Here, changing the first bit of the string to the local Google isn't quite enough. I originally changed it to the following:

https://google.co.uk/search?q=%s&{google:RLZ}... (clipped)

However when closing the settings, it would revert back to {google:baseURL} which used to revert back to the local Google. By changing it to "https", this seems to have stopped it happening for now. I'm not sure why this is even a "feature", but seems to work for the moment at least. So the full search URL is as follows:

https://google.co.uk/search?q=%s&{google:RLZ}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:bookmarkBarPinned}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}{google:instantExtendedEnabledParameter}{google:omniboxStartMarginParameter}ie={inputEncoding}

The following is a screenshot of how it looks now:

It also works to cut out all of the extra stuff, and so just make the string as follows:

https://google.co.uk/search?q=%s

If this was useful to you, I also have another post on how to correct the language reported by chrome to websites, which you can view here.