A while back I wanted to see where one of my posts ranked in Israel. I was in another country at the time, so I did the obvious thing and searched the keyword myself. The results I got were for where I was sitting, not for Israel. Not helpful.
If you have ever tried to check a ranking for a country you are not in, you have hit the same wall. And the old fix, visiting that country’s Google address like google.co.il, is gone. Those domains now redirect to google.com, and Google decides your results from your location, not the address you typed.
So here is how I actually get around it. Two ways: faking my location in the browser, which is what I reach for most, and pulling the real numbers from Search Console.
Why You Can’t Just Visit a Country Domain Anymore
I used to just open google.co.il when I wanted Israeli results. That stopped working a while ago, and not by accident.
Google now serves the same locally relevant results whether you use google.com or a country code domain, based on your location rather than the address you typed. It has since started redirecting those country domains to google.com, because they no longer change anything. The details are in Google’s own update on country code top-level domains.
What decides your results now is two things: your IP address and your Google location settings. Change either one and the results change. Every trick below is just a way to change them.
Method 1: Fake Your Location in the Browser
When I want a quick look at another country, I do not reach for anything fancy. I tell Google where to pretend I am, with two URL parameters, in an incognito window so my own history stays out of it.
Add gl (the country) and hl (the language) to a normal search URL:
https://www.google.com/search?q=your+keyword&gl=il&hl=heHere gl=il sets the country to Israel and hl=he sets the language to Hebrew. Change them to whatever you need: gl=us&hl=en for the United States, or gl=fr&hl=fr for France.
Here is the part that sold me the first time I tried it. I searched news from the United States and then from Israel, with the interface left in English both times so the only thing changing was the country. Look at the sources. The US version is all CBS, NPR, and The New York Times. The Israeli one is Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, and Reuters. Same word in the same box, a completely different front page.
Get City-Level Accuracy with uule
The gl parameter only goes down to the country. Google also ranks by precise location, so Tel Aviv and Jerusalem will not always match. When I need a specific city, I add a uule parameter.
A uule is an encoded location string. You do not have to build it by hand. Type a city into the generator below, copy the string, and stick it on the end of the URL as &uule=.... It is the same thing the paid rank trackers do quietly in the background.
These parameters get you close, not perfect. Your real IP still pulls on the results, so treat this as a good approximation. When I need the genuine article, I use a VPN instead.
The Most Faithful Way: a VPN
Your IP is the strongest signal Google has for where you are, and a URL parameter cannot beat it. A VPN can.
Connect to a server in the country you care about, set your Google language to match, and search in incognito. Now your IP, your location, and your language all line up with a real local user. That is as close as I have gotten without actually flying there.
Method 2: Check Real Rankings in Search Console
Faking your location shows you the page. It does not tell you where you actually rank. For that, and this is how I finally answered my own question, I open Search Console.
I went to the Performance report in Google Search Console and filtered by Country. There was Israel on its own: real impressions, real clicks, and my average position, from people who actually searched there. No guessing from my desk.
The number I was after was the average position, and Search Console hands it to you per country. Add a Page filter on top of the country and you get it for one specific post, which was the whole reason I started digging. The catch is that this is data, not the live results page. So I use Search Console for the ranking and the location trick for the layout.
Which Method Should You Use?
They answer different questions, so I pick based on what I need at that moment.
| What you want | Best method |
|---|---|
| See the live results page for a country | gl + hl parameters, or a VPN |
| Pin an exact city | Add a uule parameter |
| The most faithful real-user view | VPN plus the local language |
| Real ranking numbers for your pages | Search Console, filtered by country |
If your site targets more than one country, this kind of checking goes hand in hand with a correct hreflang setup, so the right page reaches the right audience in the first place.
FAQs
Common questions about checking Google results for another location:
Summary
Google took away the easy trick of switching countries by changing the domain. The results are still there, you just have to ask for them the right way.
For a quick look I add gl and hl to the URL in incognito, plus a uule when I need a specific city. When I want it accurate I use a VPN in the target country. And when I want the real ranking rather than a snapshot, I filter Search Console by country.
That is the whole kit. It is what I use every time I need to see a search the way someone in another country sees it, which, as it turns out, is more often than I expected.
