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Based on the assumption that the search results of a query on Google vary from a location to another, I need to test the search results for the website of a shop in a city far from mine. I can find the shop I’m looking for in the first page results if I add the name of the city as a keyword, but I am pretty sure it appears without this if a user from around this city does the search with only the keywords.

How can I test that? I would like to pretend, using Google, that my location is another city than the one it has identified for me.

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    You either need to add city name in your query or change your IP location to that city(Via vpn or proxy), because Google does not change result for someone who want to test their site. Though I have not try to change my geo location coordinate in chrome, but you can try that method by clearing your cookies or by creating new profile in chrome.
    – Goyllo
    Jan 10, 2018 at 17:29
  • Thanks for your reply. I have thought about using a proxy as well but I was looking for a more simple solution! I will try your suggestion though about the geo location coordinates in Chrome, good idea.
    – Brac
    Jan 10, 2018 at 17:38
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    @Goyllo, It works! This is great, although a bit hard to make it work, the override is not always taken into consideration. But nevertheless, this is the kind of solution I was looking for! Many thanks, answer this and I will accept it.
    – Brac
    Jan 10, 2018 at 18:39

2 Answers 2

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Google and other service use GEO location API to get more accurate results, since IP(Specially Mobile IP) does not return always correct location.

In chrome dev tool you can put any geo coordinate location for testing/debug purpose, and Google will use it in your local search query.

To do that first open chrome dev tool(CTRL+SHIFT+I) then click on menu(Three vertical dot), then go to more tools, then select sensors and then you can enter your latitude and longitude coordinates.

enter image description here

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You can use uule query parameter to emulate a local search.

Moz.com has a detailed write up at https://moz.com/ugc/geolocation-the-ultimate-tip-to-emulate-local-search and SERPs.com has a tool that does the hard work for you at https://serps.com/tools/google-search-location/

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  • Link only answers are considered low quality. Often links are broken making the answer useless. Can you edit this to include details?
    – closetnoc
    Jan 10, 2018 at 21:32
  • This is a bit more than a link only. It is two links and a summary. It is a complicated enough parameter that I'm not sure that a full enough description would fit in an answer here. The link to the tool looks to be about the best thing that we can have.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Jan 10, 2018 at 22:02
  • @jbcappell Well this was a very interesting reading! I've read it carefully and it appears to me that this method may not be working all the time and the author and commenters agree to say that the geo coordinates may affect your identifed position aven with the uule set correctly. Since to calculate your uule takes more time than to set the geo coordinates in Chrome Dev Tools, I will keep on using this. But what a wonderfull find!
    – Brac
    Jan 11, 2018 at 13:04

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