Tips to see google search results for different locations

What you and I are likely to see in Google differs a lot even if we search for the same thing.

The results we get depend on our:

• Search habits.
• The devices we use.
• And, most importantly, our current location.

This makes perfect sense to users who often search Google for places and services nearby.

At the same time, this leaves marketers blind to what customers really see in Google in all the different locations their business targets.

So, today we’ll dig deeper into localized search results and look into every possible way to search Google from another location – both manually and using tools.

Do All SERP Elements Depend on Location?

The short answer is “yes.”

Even though we often think of local search as something related to “local 3-pack” blocks, the rest of the SERP is also tailored for the searcher’s specific geo-location (especially for queries with an obvious local intent).

In different locations, you may see changes in organic listings (the 10 blue links include different local businesses and directories), knowledge panels, universal search blocks, and paid ads.

But What If We Simply Ignore the Change?

The bad news is, whatever research you’re up to – be that tracking search presence, analyzing competition or looking for relevant directory placements – you almost always need a certain level of SERP localization. Otherwise, you’re simply leading yourself astray.

But there’s also some good news: the level of needed granularity differs.

And while local 3-pack results are hypersensitive to the slightest location change and might sometimes require being tracked from a specific street address, organic search results remain much more stable.

For some of your organic tracking, city-level analysis is more than enough. For others, you barely need going beyond country localization.

How to Check Country-Specific SERPs

This type of monitoring might suit an international brand that targets multiple countries. Tracking your search presence on a country level will help you:

• Analyze search performance for non-geo-sensitive queries: While showing some discrepancy worldwide. Such terms tend to generate the same search results nationwide, so there is simply no need to zoom in.
• Monitor the setup of your multilingual website. To see whether the correct country and language page versions are indexed and served for each region.

Ways to check the location

A few years ago, this task was really straightforward. Country-specific search results were served on separate country domains, like google.co.nz for New Zealand or google.ru for Russia.

That’s until Google started serving search results based on the searcher’s location, regardless of the domain’s TLD extension at the end of 2017.

So, in case you haven’t noticed yet, there’s no longer any use typing a different Google domain in your address bar.

Here’s what you can do instead.

1. Change Your Google Search Settings

You can tell Google that your country differs from the automatically detected one by going to Search settings and adjusting your search region there.

2. Use a VPN or a Proxy

You can also fake your location with proxies or a VPN service like Private Internet Access or similar.  

How to Check City-Specific SERPs

City-level rankings come into play if we’re monitoring a local business – One that operates within a specific service area or has a physical location for its customers to visit.

Most of the queries customers use to find businesses of this type are geo-sensitive. They are likely to change a lot from city to city (organic results), and from district to district (local listings).

So, while tracking city-level rankings may not be the best option for local listings monitoring, you can still use it to:

• Track organic positions, which aren’t likely to fluctuate much within one city.
• Track local packs and map rankings for less competitive industries, where there simply isn’t enough competition to produce much SERP turbulence even in the hyper-geo-sensitive local packs.

Same as with country rankings, there was a time when checking city rankings was not a problem. But Google gives and Google takes away. So the SEO industry, once again, had to come up a few creative workarounds.

1. Add a ‘&near=cityname’ Parameter to Your Google URL

To check the SERPs for “dentist” from Hendersonville, NC, for example, you can use a URL like this:

https://www.google.com/search?q=dentists&near=hendersonville,+nc

(This includes your keyword in the “q=” parameter, and your location in the “near=” parameter.)

With the “&near=” parameter, the results Google serves you are literally near the location, and not necessarily within the specified city. Quite often, they might be skewed towards a larger city nearby.