Crucial Paradigm

On a number of occasions I’ve attempted to search Google from different locations to either check SEO rankings in different countries, or to simply find vendors in specific customers. Visiting the specific site (such as www.google.com for US, or www.google.co.uk for the UK) still does not appear to give you results from that country.  So I did a bit of research and found you can set the location by modifying the URL.  While this may not be the prettiest way to search, it does the job!

1. Go to www.google.com

2. Type in the term you wish to search.

3. Once the page loads, you will get a URL something along the lines of: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=crucial+paradigm

4. Add &gl=uk to the the end of the URL, where uk is the 2 letter country code of where you wish geo-target your results from.   (gl stands for Geographic Location).

5. Example: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=crucial+paradigm&gl=uk – will bring up results targeted for the UK.