How to See Google Search Results for Other Countries

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To see Google search results for another country, open Google’s Search settings → Region settings, pick the country and save; or add &gl= plus a two-letter country code (for example &gl=de) to the results URL. To check where your own site ranks in that country, don’t rely on a manual search at all: open the Performance report in Google Search Console and filter by country, which shows the average position real searchers there saw.

Below are six methods, what each one is good for, and what to do once you find a market you don’t rank in.

Key takeaways

• Google localises results to the searcher’s current location, not to the domain you type. Typing google.de from New York no longer gives you German results.
• For a quick look at a foreign results page, use Region settings or the gl and hl URL parameters. They are free and take seconds.
• For your real ranking in a country, use the Search Console country filter. It is based on actual impressions, not a single simulated search.
• For city-level checks, use a location override (Chrome DevTools or the Google Ads preview tool) rather than a VPN.
• If searchers abroad never see your pages, more checking won’t change that. The usual fix is translated, indexable pages in their language.

Why the results differ from country to country

Google says it plainly in its own help centre: “When you search on Google, your results are customized to your current region” (Google Search Help). Since October 2017 the country version is chosen by location, and “typing the relevant ccTLD in your browser will no longer bring you to the various country services” (Google, October 27, 2017).

For anyone selling abroad, that means two things:

1. A search you run from your office tells you almost nothing about what a shopper in Madrid or Osaka sees.
2. The ranking you see in a rank tracker is one sample from one location. Two people in the same country, in different cities, can get a different local pack and different organic results for the same query.

Which method to use depends on the question. “What does the page look like over there?” is a different job from “Where do we rank over there, on average?”

Method 1: Change the region in Google’s Search settings

This is the simplest way to see a results page the way a searcher in another country does.

1. Run any search on google.com.
2. Open Settings (the gear or the “Settings” link at the bottom of the page), then Search settings.
3. Go to Region settings and choose the country.
4. Click Save and run your query again.

These are the steps Google documents for a computer (Google Search Help).

Use it for a quick look at the organic results and SERP features (shopping units, “People also ask”, maps) in another market. It only sets a country, not a city, and the setting stays saved until you change it back. Reset it when you’re done, or your normal searches will look strange tomorrow.

Method 2: Add gl and hl to the search URL

Every Google results URL accepts extra parameters. Two of them matter here:

• gl is a two-letter country code. In Google’s own API documentation, the gl parameter “boosts search results whose country of origin matches the parameter value” (Google Custom Search JSON API reference).
• hl sets the interface language.

Example: to see what a German-language searcher in Germany gets for “website übersetzen”, search normally and add this to the end of the address bar URL:

&gl=de&hl=de

For Brazil in Portuguese, use &gl=br&hl=pt-BR. For Mexico in Spanish, &gl=mx&hl=es.

This is the fastest way to check many countries, and the link is reproducible, so you can send it to a colleague or open the same query for several markets in side-by-side tabs. It is still a simulation, though. Your IP address and search history can nudge the results, so open a private window first, and read the page as roughly what people there see rather than an exact rank.

Method 3: Filter Search Console by country (your real ranking)

If the real question is “how do we rank in France?”, this is the method to trust. The Performance report in Google Search Console lets you choose a Countries dimension, and in a table row “the value is the average position in Search results for the specific URL or grouping dimension shown in the table row” (Search Console Help).

How to use it:

1. Open Performance → Search results.
2. Click + Add filter → Country and pick the market.
3. Switch the table to Queries or Pages.
4. Sort by impressions. The queries with many impressions and a position between about 8 and 30 are your best opportunities in that country.

The data comes from real searchers, broken down by country, page and query. The default view covers the last three months; widen the date range for longer trends. The report only lists queries where your site appeared. If you have no pages in the local language, many local queries will be missing, and that gap tells you something too.

It helps to compare the same page’s position in two countries. If an English page ranks 6 in the UK and 40 in Germany, German searchers are probably being served German pages you don’t have yet.

Method 4: Override your location in Chrome DevTools

When you need city-level precision, for example to see the local pack in Lyon rather than Paris, use Chrome’s built-in location override:

1. On the Google results page, open DevTools (Ctrl+Shift+I or Cmd+Option+I).
2. Open the command menu (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P), type Sensors and open the panel.
3. Under Geolocation, choose a preset city or enter custom latitude and longitude.
4. Reload the results page with DevTools still open.

Chrome documents this under “Override geolocation” in the Sensors panel guide. Combine it with gl and hl from Method 2 for the country and language.

Local businesses need this most, along with anyone whose results change by location (services, retail, restaurants). The override only applies to that tab while DevTools is open, and it still gives you one simulated searcher.

Method 5: Use the Google Ads preview tool

If you have a Google Ads account, the Ad preview and diagnosis tool lets you choose a location, language and device and see the results page for that combination. Google recommends it over searching yourself because “using the tool avoids accumulating ad impressions and impacting your performance statistics” (Google Ads Help).

In the Google Ads interface it sits under Tools → Troubleshooting → Ad preview and diagnosis.

Advertisers get the most out of it, but anyone can use it to set country, city, language and device from one screen. It is built for ads, so organic results show up but aren’t the focus, and the tool’s layout changes whenever Google updates the Ads interface.

Method 6: A VPN or a rank-tracking tool

A VPN gives you an IP address in another country, and Google then treats you as a searcher there. It works, but it is the least controlled option: many VPN addresses are shared data-centre IPs, Google may show CAPTCHAs, and you still get only one sample.

Rank-tracking tools (the big SEO suites all have one) run the checks from many locations on a schedule and record the history. They are worth paying for once you are tracking dozens of keywords across several markets. Before you pay, check that the tool supports the exact countries, languages and cities you care about, and whether it reports desktop and mobile separately.

Which method should you use?

What to do when you don’t rank abroad

Checking foreign results usually turns up the same thing: the local results are full of pages in the local language, and yours isn’t one of them. Google can only rank a page in a language if that page exists, can be crawled, and tells Google which language and region it is for. Most cases come down to three fixes:

1. Give each language its own crawlable URL. A language switcher that swaps text in the browser without changing the URL gives Google nothing to index. Use subdirectories (/de/), subdomains (de.example.com) or separate domains. Our comparison of subdirectories and subdomains for multilingual SEO explains the trade-offs.
2. Add hreflang annotations that connect each page with its translations, so the German page is shown to German searchers and the English page to English searchers. The complete hreflang guide covers the syntax and the common mistakes.
3. Target the words local people search with, which are not always a straight translation of yours. People in Spain and Mexico don’t always search with the same words. Run the checks above for your translated keywords before you commit to them; international keyword research walks through the process.

ConveyThis handles this part. It translates your site into any of 210 languages and publishes each language on its own URL, as a subfolder, a subdomain or a ?lang parameter (subfolders and subdomains are on the Business plan and higher), with hreflang tags added automatically and the page title, meta description and JSON-LD translated as well. You can then fix wording in the visual editor, lock brand terms in a glossary, and see exactly what each multilingual SEO feature does before you switch it on. Words are counted only when translated content is shown to a visitor, and bot visits don’t count, so letting Googlebot crawl every translated page does not use up your plan.

After you launch a language, go back to Method 3. Within a few weeks the Search Console country filter should show the translated pages collecting impressions for local queries. That is the most reliable sign the new market is working.

Frequently asked questions

Does typing google.fr or google.de still show local results? No. Since October 2017 Google picks the country version from your location, and typing a country domain no longer switches you to that country’s results (Google). Use Region settings or gl instead.

Is incognito mode enough to see “neutral” results? It removes your signed-in history, but not your location. Combine a private window with Region settings or the gl parameter.

How accurate are manual checks? They are snapshots from one simulated place and time. For decisions, use the country filter in Search Console, which averages real impressions.

Can I check mobile results from another country? Yes. Use Chrome DevTools device mode together with a location override, or the Google Ads preview tool, which has a device setting.

Next step

If your checks show a market that searches in a language your site doesn’t speak yet, compare the ConveyThis plans or create an account and publish your first translated language, then measure it with the Search Console country filter.