How to geolocate your Google searches?

As you know, Google search results differ depending on the (physical) location from which the searches are made. The order of organic results, sitelinks, the 3 Google Local results and other elements can change. Our SEO agency offers you a simple and effective method to view Google search results from the location of your choice on the map.

In the small world of SEO there are quite a few ways to emulate or obtain a geographic position and thus geolocate your Google searches (proxy, VPN, VPS, etc.). Most of these tools are paid and/or reserved for professionals. Viewing results in a geolocated way can be useful, for example to put yourself in the shoes of a prospect interested in an SEO service, in the shoes of a client reviewing results after a netlinking strategy has been implemented, or even to work on the local SEO of a business (such as ranking among the 3 local results selected by Google for the query “Chinese restaurants in Paris”).

Google has been betting on mobile for some time, and it is in this spirit that it wants its results to be increasingly geolocated. Internet users on their mobile phones can thus get more relevant information matching where they are without having to specify the location in question in their search.

The search geolocation method using Google Chrome

Here is a little-known but very handy method to view the results that appear at a very precise location without actually being there, without installing any software and, above all, at no cost. You will need the Google Chrome browser, with 2 windows open: one on Google and the other on Google Maps.

1 – On Google Maps, search for the city from which you would like to be geolocated and click on a precise point on the map.

2 – In the page’s address, the latitude/longitude of this point now appears; look for the data after the at sign: @ XX.XXXX,Y.YYYYY (and before the comma) and copy it (into a notepad, for example).

3 – Go to Google.fr and run a search.

4- At the bottom of the page you should see a line telling you the location from which Google automatically geolocated you.

5- Click “use precise location” if you haven’t already done so, for greater accuracy, then “Allow”.

6- Go to the Chrome menu and click “More tools / Developer tools” (or simply press the F12 key on your keyboard).

7- At the top right of this new window you will see 3 small dots aligned vertically to click. A small menu then opens; go to “More tools / Sensors”.

8- In “Geolocation” and its drop-down menu, choose the “Custom location…” option.

9- Replace the Latitude and Longitude with the ones found in step 1 of this list, as in the example:

10- Click at the bottom, under the results, on “Use precise location” then refresh the results.

And there you go: you can now view geolocated Google results from almost anywhere you want.

You can notably see the geolocated Sitelinks that are presented to Internet users for different cities, as in the example below, which compares the sitelinks of Laposte.com in Lille and in Lyon:

For those who have an AdWords account, you can also use the “Ad Preview and Diagnosis” tool to be able to