windows 7 - Google Chrome search engine settings

GC version: 18

Default GC search engine setting looks like this:

{google:baseURL}search?{google:RLZ}{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:instantFieldTrialGroupParameter}sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}&q=%s

It's searching on Google Search in my country. How do I change that to always use Google US? I've tried to set the default setting to:

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=%s

This works except when using some symbols like plus sign '+', since it's not escaped. For example, if I type '123+456' in address bar, it will be interpreted as http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=123+456, which would do google search '123 456', not the calculation result 579 I was looking for. Another example is that searching 'C++ bit operation' would get google search 'C bit operation'. This issue makes address bar searching not working in some cases. I was wondering if there's any way to resolve this?

You need to edit the file

Local State.txt

in your chrome directory.

Chrome's default directory can be found out here : chrome://version/ [Copy and paste this in the URL bar] (The profile path)

Edit the local state file there and replace google.xxx (Your country's extension) with google.com in the browser field "last_known_google_url" and "last_prompted_google_url"

Replace google.co.in with google.com

According to Rob's comment, set default search engine to http://www.google.com/search?{google:RLZ}{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:ori‌​ginalQueryForSuggestion}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:instantFieldTri‌​alGroupParameter}sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}&q=%s resolve this issue.

You better do the following:
How to fix:

1. Open "C:\Users{your_user_account}\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data" folder.
2. Open "Local State" file.
3. Add/Edit these in the node "browser":
   "last_known_google_url": "https://www.google.com/", "last_prompted_google_url": "https://www.google.com/",
4. Open "Default/Preferences" file.
5. Add/Edit these in the node "browser":
   "last_known_google_url": "https://www.google.com/", "last_prompted_google_url": "https://www.google.com/",
   

How node "browser" looks like:
  },
  "browser": {
     //your code here

I figured that out after a lot of investigation in my Chrome installation directory, as I couldn't find any workable solution by Googling the problem, so I prefer to share it :)

Try adding a space between the terms, i.e. 123 + 567, although it works on my version of chrome even without them.