That could work, but it's not perfect. I think part of it is that it's all very contextual - for example, if there is an English language version of the exact same content, then I almost always want the English language version, even if I'm searching within Germany, plus there's a bunch of exceptions where e.g. I always want German Amazon (because that's where my account lives).

Google mostly gets this right, at least in my experience, although it's become a lot worse recently. Having to configure it with bangs might work, I'll have another go at that in the future.

Thanks for mentioning bangs! I'm having the same issue as in the parent comment and didn't realize you could use bangs to set the location.

Still not an ideal solution for me, because it requires me to plan ahead when typing the query (or rewriting it later, which is slower).

Bangs can go anywhere in the search term, and if you press "!" on the search results page it focuses the search bar and types it there.