SEARCH MARKETING BLOG

Checking Localised Search Engine Rankings from Elsewhere

Google’s search engine results pages (SERPS) are increasingly becoming more localised.  If you wanted to see the results that people in Australia get on google.com.au when searching for terms like "SEO" then you simply accessed the regional site.  But now, the results you get from any regional site are adjusted slightly to reflect your current location. 

There is a way to tell Google that you want the same results that others see in a given location.  I blogged about this approach a bit back in January (see How to see Google.com USA results from a different country), but I wanted to follow up and highlight some additional parameters that you can use to be even more specific.

Perform a search in Google and then look at the URL of the Google results.  You will notice that there are some parameters in the URL that tell Google what you are searching for.  For example, a search for "pizza" will have a URL like this:

    http://www.google.com/search?q=pizza

Where the "q" is the query/question and "pizza" is the search request.

By adding some additional parameters to the URL of this search, we can tell Google that we want to see results as would be seen by users in a specific geographic location.  These parameters are:

    gl = Country code (see full list)
    gll = Lat & Long
    gr = Worldwide region code (see ful